Tasteful friends: Badynghams, a 15thC house in Great Waltham, near Chelmsford, Essex, £1.1M

Well-spotted, OP! I absolutely love it, and it is pretty inexpensive for a house of such character in the Home Counties.

I’m sure there must be some downsides, but it looks perfect. For once, I love how the house is decorated and furnished too. It would be such a relaxing place to return home to every day.

I agree with R1. It really has a cozy peasant vibe that I like. May not be a bitch to hear which is always a concern with ancient piles of bricks.

The only drawback (although it is probably also the reason it is still so attractive) is that it is Grade-II listed, so any renovations you do will need council approval, and you will face legal proceedings if you remove original features (including brickwork and glass) without prior approval. Even carrying out necessary repairs requires specialist workers and council approval. No double-glazing. No changing floorboards. No modern additions of any kind.

However, in an area where a fairly charmless family home built in the 1970s can cost upwards of £700,000, this place is priced very appealingly.

Beautiful house, although for once its a bit older than I like, ideally I'd prefer something not more than about 300 years old.

I particularly like a lot of the furniture, it has been staged very well for once

Dreamy.

Not one picture of a ceiling means they are all six foot rooms built for 1400s tall people.

A happy home for a hunchback.

Pass

Sorry, but it’s full timbered construction or nothing for me.

It is charming and the grounds and surrounding area are gorgeous. I too have some concerns about ceiling height and even more about 600 year old mold spores. Probably not a place for asthmatics.

[quote]The only drawback (although it is probably also the reason it is still so attractive) is that it is Grade-II listed, so any renovations you do will need council approval, and you will face legal proceedings if you remove original features (including brickwork and glass) without prior approval. Even carrying out necessary repairs requires specialist workers and council approval. No double-glazing. No changing floorboards. No modern additions of any kind.

That's all very plus for me. In theory, people who want to install plastic framed windows, reconfigure facades, add on ungainly extensions, and replace historic materials and details with new should look to build new or not buy a listed building.

In reality, Grade II status doesn't carry the weight it once did and too many conservation officers are now idiots, or overworked idiots. Councils are increasingly inclined to favor any lame argument for "investment" and people left ad right are buying listed buildings for the express purpose of making their stamp upon them: making an Edwardian house look Georgian; tricking out a Regency house with High Victorian Gothic details; stripping off original plaster to expose stone or brick that was alway meant to be covered; destroying original fireplaces to shove a hideous B&Q "fire burner" in for coziness, replacing original windows with miserable UPVC double-glazed units ugly enough to spot from a satellite, ripping up Victorian encaustic tlle floors to replace with more B&Q out of the box crap, all done with fabricated justifications that the historic charms that attracted them to the house "don't work with their aesthetic", or lies that clearly original details were in fact later alterations...few of which claims get challenged by most conservation officers. It's a miserable time for historic preservation in the UK and the U.S., any gains of the last half of the 20thC in appreciation for historic preservation have been replaced by trophy hunting for historic properties to "gut renovate," ripping the apart to a replace every historic molecule, preserving a bit of the exterior look, and slapping a bit of architectural salvage from some other property from another country and calling the whole thing a great preservation success of a "rescuer" who completely fucks up a building and then pats himself on the back for it.

You can in fact add a modern addition to a Grade II building (example at link.) It's always been possible to do with good reason and with good design, but in recent years it has become too easy to do and to do poorly, and home buyers now feel that it is their right, their duty even. I've no problem with an addition whose purpose or justification is compelling and whose design is good, but buying a listed building comes with some simple obligations that are more than made clear in the buying process. It's like adopting a dog: if you don't like to hear barking, it's best to avoid a Basset Hound, not to adopt one and then have his vocal cords cut or to beat him with a stick every time he barks.

It's great!

The ceilings are the perfect height.

Lovely home. I would love to live there. There could be issues with some of my friends though that are 6'5."

Those chimneys are awfully tall. I’d be nervous about them falling over in a windstorm although I suppose if they’ve lasted 500 years, it’s unlikely. I’d buy it and all the furniture in a flash.

R9 agree with what you say - but that modern addition to a Grade II house you linked is NOT what I'd consider a good addition, its totally jarring and completely unsympathetic to the original house. An addition should at least look at first glance as if it could have been a part of the original home, that doesnt. It just looks all kinds of wrong, even if it's purpose or justification is compelling. It even says "The client wished to create a space that was truly special and completely different in character from the beautiful original dwelling." And whats worse, they tore down an two storey early Victorian addition to put that abortion in, something that was probably far more in character. At least it is all at the back so the original frontage isnt spoilt. To me this is a perfect example of an "ungainly extension"

R13: I agree it's a poor addition (made at great expense); I picked that example because it shows so clearly that additions to Grade II buildings are indeed possible. The prevailing thinking and regulations in the U.K. (and in the U.S. since the 1970s) is that additions to historic buildings should be readily distinguishable from the historic building to which they are attached.

[quote]An addition should at least look at first glance as if it could have been a part of the original home

This concept will throw conservation officers charged with overseeing applications for changes to historic buildings into apoplectic fits, crying out "pastiche! pastiche! Never!!!"

I agree with the concept of marking some visible distinction between original and added elements, but disagree that the addition must avoid any possible confusion, however far-fetched, that it isn't "wholly of its own time," that it wasn't added yesterday. Many historic buildings grew by successive additions and alterations, with these later elements taking cues and repeating patterns from the original core, even copying them with great accuracy to make a 3-bay house expanded to a 5-bay house an alteration invisible to all but a few trained eyes 5 years later, 200 years later. Additions to historic buildings should, I think, take their design cues from the patterns of the original building but make some noticeable yet not necessarily blunt force break to announce a later part to the building.

I'd think being in Chelmsford is also something of a catch.