Details
INGATESTONE AND FRYERNING
TL60SE LITTLE HYDE LANE, Ingatestone
723-1/3/405 (South side)
20/02/76 Nos.l AND 2
Little Hyde Farm Cottages
(Formerly Listed as:
BRENTWOOD
LITTLE HYDE ROAD, Ingatestone
No.1 Cottage and No.2 Cottage)
GV II
House, now 2 cottages. Early C15, extended in late C16, C19
and C20. Timber-framed, roughcast rendered, roofed with
handmade red clay tiles. 2-bay hall facing E, with late C16
stack in right bay against front wall, and C19 stack against
it to right. 2-bay parlour/solar cross-wing to left, with C18
stack at front left corner, and C19 single-storey lean-to
extension to left. Late C16 2-bay cross-wing to right,
replacing service bay of original hall range. C20
single-storey lean-to extensions to rear of both cross-wings
and hall range.
Hall range of one storey with attic; left cross-wing of 2
storeys, right cross-wing similar but with attic occupied.
No.2 cottage has the C16 stack and that part of the hall which
is to the rear of it, and everything to the left; No.1 has the
remainder. No.1 has a C20 square bay with hipped roof; all
other windows are C20 casements, including one in a gabled
dormer in the left bay of the hall. No.2 has a plain boarded
door, and a flat canopy over it and the adjacent window. No.1
has a C20 half-glazed door and flat canopy at the right side.
Weatherboarded dado. Plain bargeboards.
INTERIOR: the left cross-wing is jettied to the front, with 2
original plain brackets and exposed joists of horizontal
section. In the hall the studding and display bracing at the
'high end' are exposed and complete, with large-diameter
peg-holes for a former fixed bench, a mortice for a former
draught screen beside the original doorway to the solar,
doorhead missing. Floor in hall inserted 1565 for which there
is documentary evidence (Essex Record Office) with chamfered
axial beam with step stops cut back at the corners of the
stops, joists plastered to the soffits. Large wood-burning
hearth, originally about 3m wide; with 0.33m jambs and a
chamfered mantel beam with one plain stop and one convex stop;
interior reduced with C20 brickwork. The room above is wholly
plastered to the collars except the wallplates, which do not
exhibit any evidence of the original window or shuttering
arrangements. The left cross-wing has a chamfered binding beam
and middle storey posts with mitred stops; 2 solid braces
0.11m wide; heavy plain joists jointed to the binding beam
with unrefined central tenons. C20 grate in corner stack. The
room above is plastered except for 2 chamfered arched braces
0.09m wide to the central tie-beam. Roof difficult to access,
reported to retain the original crownpost structure. The right
cross-wing has jowled posts, exposed plain joists (some of
reused timber) of horizontal section in the rear bay, and a
C20 grate. Most surfaces are plastered; no evidence is visible
of whether there was a jetty originally. Each wallplate has a
simple tenoned and splayed scarf, an unusual type in Essex,
although common elsewhere. Clasped purlin roof with
wind-bracing of reversed curvature, rare in Essex, familiar in
the east Midlands.
HISTORICAL NOTE: this house is well documented in the Petre
archives as Campers, with a holding of 10 acres. The page of
the 1556 survey relating to it is missing, but it is mentioned
repeatedly in court rolls from 1561 to 1582. In 1565 the
tenant Thomas Springfield, a carpenter, was ordered to build
'a loft or flower on the hall ....... with joists and boards',
and in 1575 he was ordered to repair the house, and again in
1580. The re-use of timber for joists, and the use of
unfamiliar scarf joints and wind-bracing, probably indicates
that the right cross-wing was built during his tenancy, 1565
to c1601, and that he was a carpenter trained in another part
of England. The Walker map of 1601 shows the house much as it
is now - a hall range with the door at end and a brick stack
immediately to left of it, a window near the left end, and
2-storey cross-wings, all with tiled roofs. Clearly the stack
was inserted to left of the cross-entry, with the hearth
facing to left, and the cross- entry was not blocked until a
second stack was built against it when it was converted to
cottages in the C19. The upper part of the hall, although
floored in 1565, was not lit by a dormer until after 1601; the
upper section of the window would have given some light at
floor level (Essex Record Office, Edwards and Newton, 1984).
Although much of the structure is concealed by plaster, this
building appears to have remained structurally unaltered since
the end of the C16, having escaped the destructive alterations
characteristic of the Georgian period, as seen, for instance,
at Murcocks, Back Lane (qv). It deserves careful treatment in
any future renovation.
(Essex Record Office: D/Dp M.99-101: 8; Edwards AC and Newton
KC: The Walkers of Hanningfield, Surveyors & Mapmakers
Extraordinary: 1984-: PLATE XXXVI).
Listing NGR: TL6556500727
