Sockburn Farmhouse

Sockburn Farmhouse is a farmhouse built in the mid-18th century for Thomas Hutchinson, with late 18th to early 19th century wings. The left wing was altered around 1965. The building features narrow brick in an irregular English garden wall bond and mainly has black-glazed pantiled roofs with old brick chimney stacks. It has a reversed U-plan, with the main block and wings set back at right angles on the returns.

The main block is two stories high with five bays. It has a central six-panel door with a patterned fanlight in a round-arched stone surround that includes impost blocks. The original openings contain replaced sashes with projecting stone sills, all under rubbed-brick segmental arches, with the heads infilled with narrow brick. The steeply-pitched hipped roof has swept eaves and stone ridge tiles, along with tall lateral stacks featuring top bands.

To the right is a lower two-story, two-bay wing with scattered sashes and a steeply-pitched roof, hipped on the right, with a heightened lateral stack above the right return. The left wing, altered around 1965, has a French window and a hipped roof on the left, with a lateral stack above the left return. Each wing has a two-bay return with replaced sashes. At the rear, there is a central round-arched 12-pane stair window flanked by 12-pane sashes, and an imported six-panel door in an open-pedimented doorcase on the rear of the left wing. The interior was altered in the late 19th century.

Later additions on the rear of the right wing and a late 20th-century wall linking the left wing to the dovecote are not of special interest.

Historically, this farmhouse was the home of Thomas Hutchinson, who died in 1789 and was known for breeding shorthorn cattle. It is also notable as the place where William Wordsworth met his future wife, Mary Hutchinson, in May 1799.