Description

INGATESTONE AND FRYERNING
TQ6599 HIGH STREET, Ingatestone
723-1/14/399 (East side (off)) 29/12/52 Rays
(Formerly Listed as:
BRENTWOOD
CHELMSFORD ROAD, Ingatestone
Rays)

II

Formerly known as: Ray Farmhouse.
House. Early C17 altered and extended in C19 and C20.
Timber-framed, plastered and weatherboarded, roofed with
handmade and machine-made red clay tiles. 3 bays facing W with
an axial stack in the middle bay, forming a lobby-entrance
plan. C17/C18 wing to rear of middle bay, with external stack
at end, and catslide extension to left. Minor C20
single-storey extensions to rear and right of rear wing. Early
C19 cross-wing to left of main range, extending forwards, with
internal stack in left side.
2 storeys and attic. Ground floor, splayed bay of C20
casements, and 2 early C19 casements. First floor, group of
8+8+8+8 lights, the outer 2 being casements, the inner fixed,
and 2 casements, all early C19. Early C19 half-glazed door
with Gothic tracery in gabled porch. The left elevation has on
each floor one early C19 casement. This elevation and the rear
gable of the cross-wing are weatherboarded. The right
elevation of the rear wing has on the ground floor one early
C19 sash of 4+8 lights. The rear elevation of the main range,
to left of the rear extensions, has on the ground floor a
reused C17 wrought-iron casement with 30 small rectangular
panes, early glass and leading, mounted on its side as a fixed
light. Grouped diagonal shafts.
INTERIOR: unjowled posts, heavy studding, primary straight
bracing, face-halved and bladed scarf in front wallplate. The
right ground-floor room has an axial beam with early C18
ovolo-moulded plaster, and an early C19 grey marble fireplace
with moulded jambs and paterae, in a blocked larger hearth.
The left ground-floor room has a chamfered axial beam which
has been severed and jointed to an C18 transverse beam to form
a stair, although the present stair is later. Large
wood-burning hearth, the front jamb rebuilt, the interior
relined. The roof has been raised about 0.90m in the C18,
originally only one storey and attics. The right first-floor
room has an early C19 cast-iron grate with pilasters in low
relief, and curved splays. In the left first-floor room of the
main range is a C17 3-plank door to a closet in front of the
stack. In the attic the base of a diagonal shaft is visible,
covered when the roof was raised. In the left side of the rear
wing, above a door, is a C17/C18 borrowed light of 9+9+9 small
leaded panes.
HISTORICAL NOTE: Ray's Farm was among the lands in Fryerning
granted by Lady Dorothea Wadham to endow Wadham College,
Oxford, and it is extensively documented there to c1920. Maps
of 1741 and 1745 show it as a copyhold farm of 100 acres, and
the latter gives an elevational view captioned 'The West Front
of Ray Farm House'. It has a central door, 2 ground-floor
windows to the left, one to the right, and 3 on the first
floor, a diamond-shaped central stack, and a lean-to to left
in the position of the present cross-wing. Of the 2 windows to
left of the door the left one is depicted as smaller than all
the others. This is now blocked, probably by the post
introduced when the stair was built in its present position;
the window above the door, to a small closet, is also blocked.
Examination of the frame within this closet would establish
whether the walls were raised to their present height before
or after 1745; it is concealed internally now.

Listing NGR: TQ6558799878

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26502767

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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