The older settlements around Basildon retained individual farmhouses and houses even as the New Town grew around them. Their timber frames, weatherboarding, tiled roofs and old plans reveal a very different landscape from the post-war estates.
Nevendon Road – Grade II
Nevendon Manor was formerly known as Little Bromfords. Documentary evidence records a sale at the manor in 1419, suggesting a house probably stood on the site by then. The present house is principally sixteenth century, timber framed and plastered, with an L-shaped plan.
Important surviving details include an original chimney stack with grouped diagonal shafts, early doors, blocked original windows and an iron fireback dated 1641. Remains of a moat survive around the site, adding to its connection with the much older manor.
Fore Riders is a small sixteenth-century timber-framed house on Old Nevendon Road, altered in the eighteenth century and later periods. Its survival helps preserve the appearance and scale of old Nevendon before the surrounding district became urbanised.
Westley Hall is an eighteenth-century timber-framed and weatherboarded house with later additions. Buildings like this belonged to the dispersed settlement of Langdon Hills, where farms and homes stood along lanes and across the hillside rather than within a modern housing estate.
Smaller weatherboarded cottages were homes for agricultural workers, tradespeople and other village families. Timber framing covered with overlapping boards was a practical Essex building method: damaged boards could be repaired or replaced while protecting the older frame beneath.