The original house consisted of a symmetrical hall and parlour divided by a central chimney stack with a lobby entrance and a two-storied porch. The framing was rendered and probably pargeted in the latest fashion of its day, with projecting oriel windows containing ovolo-moulded mullions. The octagonal shafts of the chimney have been rebuilt, but it preserves all four original fireplaces including two finely decorated stone examples that fully justify the property’s ‘star’ listing. A rear service wing contains what may be the intact fragment of an earlier house on the site, with evidence of a garderobe (i.e. privy) at its northern end, but consists largely of re-used medieval timber and is difficult to interpret with precision. <1>
Documentary research and a series of deeds in the possession of the current owner suggest the property was a copyhold farm known as Knights in the 14th century, but had been separated from its land and divided into first three and then five small cottages by the 18th and 19th centuries respectively. It was bought for £250 by Mrs Grace Faithfull Roper in 1930 and sold again as Knights Manor in 1935 for £2,100. Mrs Roper was a property developer and amateur architect responsible for similar restoration projects elsewhere in Dedham, most famously at Le Tolbooth. She stripped the frame, replaced the windows, added the present porch and two lean- to extensions with curved roofs in the manner of Lutyens, inserted an Arts and Crafts oak staircase and introduced a variety of 16th, 17th and 19th century antique panelling and carving. The house is now of equal historic importance as an early-17th century house and as a fine example of 1930s Mock Tudor restoration which illustrates a major but often overlooked fashion in British interior design.