Manor House

This is a manor house with origins possibly dating back to the 16th century or earlier. It has undergone significant alterations and rebuilding in the 17th and 18th centuries, followed by further changes in the mid-19th century and renovations in the 20th century.

The house is constructed with timber framing, chalk and ironstone rubble walling to the central section, and brick to the remainder, with a colour-washed finish throughout. The roof is pantiled. It has a gable end facing the road and is arranged on a T-shaped plan, comprising three rooms with an entrance hall (originally a lobby-entry) to the left, a single-room wing to the rear right, and a single-room extension, formerly a stable and granary, to the right. A section of timber framing is visible. The main part of the house is two storeys high with three first-floor windows, and a lower two-storey single-window addition exists to the right. A late 19th- to early 20th-century projecting, flat-roofed brick porch with a six-panelled door beneath a plain fanlight in a round-arched panelled surround, and a coved corniced doorcase, is positioned to the front. C19 twelve-pane sash windows are set within reveals with sills and stucco keyed cambered arches; a three-light sliding sash with glazing bars is positioned to the right, also beneath a similar arch. The right extension features a twelve-pane sliding sash under a segmental arch. Iron tie-bar ends are visible to the left. First-floor windows include a two-light sliding sash with small panes to the left, a twelve-pane sliding sash to the centre, and a six-pane sash to the right, all with segmental arches; the right extension has a twelve-pane sliding sash set at eaves level. Two brick courses corbel outwards to the left, near the mid-first floor window, likely marking the former position of a wall plate. A rebuilt axial stack and a projecting end stack to the right feature dentilled brick cornices. The left return has a twelve-pane ground-floor sash similar to the front, and a sixteen-pane and a twelve-pane sash on the first floor and in the attic, all beneath segmental arches. The rear of the house has five corbelled-out brick courses to the first floor of the main range and sixteen-pane sashes in flush wood architraves to the wing.

Inside, a round-arched opening leads to a passage from the entrance to the rear, cut through a former stack in the 19th century. Exposed timber framing includes sections of a central truss to the right of the stack, with a post and the lower section of a pegged arch brace in the ground floor right, clasping a ledge beam which supports the later first floor. The upper section of a post on the first floor has straight braces to a cranked tie beam, forming a pointed arch with roll-mouldings on its underside. A wall to the first floor right has a central timber post with down-braces to a tie-beam, supported by up-braces extending into the roofspace to support a reused wall-plate containing a stop-splayed scarf joint with sallied butts and face keys of late medieval form. The post and braces bear traces of smoke-blackening. A collared and trench-purlin roof dates to the 19th century. A single-flight staircase with turned newels and plain balusters, dated 1872, suggests the probable date for much of the 19th-century remodelling. The house represents a significant survival of a former timber-framed open-hall house.