Church Farmhouse

Church Farmhouse

A farmhouse with 16th-century origins, rebuilt around 1580 for the Ryther family, reputedly as a priest's residence. The building was refronted and raised for the Ryther family in 1707, with early 19th-century repairs and renovations carried out in the 1970s.

The structure is timber-framed, infilled and encased in brick, with an inserted brick axial stack and a pantile roof. The plan probably originally consisted of an open hall with a first-floor chamber at the left end. This was later altered to three rooms with a lobby entry to the left of centre, and an outshut to the rear left containing the main and secondary staircases. A single-room addition was added to the left end at a later date. The building is two storeys with four bays, plus a single-storey, single-bay addition to the left. It has a plinth with chamfered quoins.

The entrance is in the narrow second bay, which breaks forward. The original three-fielded-panel door is studded with nails spelling "1707" on the central rail and is set in a 19th-century frame with a plain 20th-century glazed overlight beneath a stucco flat arch with vermiculated keystone. The ground floor has 20th-century two-light eight-pane casements with sills beneath similar keyed arches. On the first floor, the entrance bay has a small six-pane window with a stone tablet below bearing the inscription "B R E 1 7 0 7" in a round-arched panel with incised star motifs in the spandrels. A carved tablet above the window bears the painted Ryther family arms with crest surmounted by a mantled helm. The flanking bays have stepped eaves. Nineteenth-century paired brackets for guttering (missing at the time of resurvey) support the eaves, which are topped with two courses of concrete flat tiles. The 19th-century rebuilt axial stack stands on the right end, with a right return stack.

The left extension has a late 18th- to early 19th-century sixteen-pane sliding sash window, stepped eaves, and a 20th-century wooden eaves board. A round-headed entrance with a board door beneath a plain panel is set into the left return. The right return has a pair of 20th-century six-pane ground-floor casements. The rear elevation displays random fenestration and altered entrances.

Internally, visible timber framing includes wall posts, intermediate posts, and a rear wall plate with a pegged stop-splayed scarf joint. Ground-floor rooms have heavy chamfered spine beams, the one in the central room having cyma stops, with exposed joists. Those in the left room are laid flat and probably date to the 16th century, while those in the right rooms are 18th-century insertions or early 19th-century replacements. An inserted chimney features inglenooks with salt cupboards and chamfered oak bressumers with cyma stops. The front wall contains a pair of blocked former open hall windows, one apparently containing sections of original oak frame beneath the plaster.

The building retains a good 17th- to early 18th-century open-well main staircase with a corniced string, corniced handrail, squat bulb-on-urn balusters with round knops, and profiled newel posts with sockets for former finials. The outshut contains an 18th-century domed oven with a reset flattened ogee-moulded lintel or bressumer inscribed "1707" supporting a wrought-iron framework for the brick dome. An adjacent room contains reused timber framing.

The Ryther arms visible on the front also appear on Robert Ryther's tombstone of 1695 in the nearby church of All Saints. However, the initials on the datestone do not correspond to those of the then vicar or members of the main branch of the Ryther family. Some episodes of the building history are well documented in the deeds. This is an early and important survival.