Althrey Hall

Timber-framing, slate roof with some roof-lights; brick chimneys including paired star shaped C20 stacks to right. H-plan house with 2-storey wings flanking open central hall. Kitchen extension to left with steeply pitched slate-clad former chimney bay. Gabled jettied wings with timber-framing in herringbone patterns, also in the main range, gabled storeyed porch in the angle of the service end and cross wing to left. C20 windows throughout. Rear elevation of similar character but little original timber-framing survives apart from the jettied chapel wing to the left. A large C20 brick-built off-centre lateral stack said to be built from the foundations of an original.

Open hall flanked by storeyed wings and a cross-passage screened from hall by a spere truss. The hall has arched-braced trusses with cusping above the braces, the upper part of the spere truss not original. At the dais end there is an upper truss suggesting there were large windows at this end; at the service end one cusped windbrace survives; windbraces in the remainder of the roof structure are of C20 to a similar pattern. At dais ends are upper floor chambers of unequal size, that to N has remains of wall paintings including depictions of pomegranates and foliage. On the S wall alternating strips of red oxide and blue/grey with graffiti including some of C16 character. An opening leads to a scarce example of a post-reformation private chapel which has a painting representing the celestial city on the ceiling and sacred monograms in the tympana. The 2-bay chamber to the S also has remnants of wall paintings including the only example of an exceptionally well-preserved double-portrait of a man and a woman in mid C16 dress; these are of national importance. (For a full description of the wallpaintings see NMR file SJ34SE). At the service end of the hall is a range of openings, the central one leads to a passage with boarded ceiling leading to a former kitchen. The rooms above the service area appear to have been used as parlours since there is a small trace of wallpainting in the S room. The former kitchen is storeyed with chamfered and stopped secondary ceiling beams of C17 character, above this is a room with panelling of C17 character.