Langtons House and Gardens

The Grade II listing was made on 19 January 1978 as list entry 1358503, and three further Grade II entries in the same grounds were listed on the same day: the Orangery, NHLE 1079918; the Gazebo and Bath House, NHLE 1358504; and the Stable Block, NHLE 1079919. The land was recorded as 'Langedun' in the thirteenth century, and a building called Marchauntes — a medieval word for merchants — stood on the site in 1446. The two-storey wings, the orangery and the stable block were added in the mid to late eighteenth century, and the bath house is an early nineteenth-century feature. The remodelling of the grounds is attributed to Humphry Repton, who incorporated paths, walls, lake, gardeners' bothies, a 'mazy' shrubbery, an enclosed orchard and fine timber trees; the site now covers about 11 acres against roughly 90 acres of parkland, paddocks and orchards originally. On 1 June 1929 Langtons was given to the town of Hornchurch by Varco Williams and his daughter Elizabeth Parkes, with the proviso that the house should be maintained and the gardens kept open to the public. The grounds are the Langtons conservation area.