White House Farmhouse and attached buildings

White House Farmhouse and Attached Buildings

This is a farmhouse with attached buildings dating to at least the 17th century, with a possible earlier core, containing substantial 18th-century fabric and 19th and 20th-century alterations.

The farmhouse is timber-framed, largely refaced in red brick with sandstone dressings and brick stacks. The roof is covered in slate and modern concrete tiles. The attached buildings are timber-framed with sandstone rubble or brick construction, with early 21st-century weatherboarding applied to the gable ends of the cider house and wain house.

The buildings have an irregular rectangular plan aligned north-east to south-west. The farmhouse is positioned centrally, with the cider house attached to its north-east side following the same alignment. The bake house is attached to the south-west elevation as a continuation of the south-east or garden elevation. The wain house, also attached to the south-west side, is parallel to the bake house and separated from it by a narrow courtyard, breaking forward of the front north-west elevation.

The farmhouse and attached buildings are set back from the road and surrounded by former agricultural buildings. The farmhouse is predominantly two storeys with its principal façade to the north-west. It is arranged into three ranges: a central range with flanking two-and-a-half-storey gabled cross wings. The central bay of the principal north-west elevation has been extended flush with the flanking gables, while the garden south-east elevation remains recessed. All windows are timber casements. A six-panelled early 19th-century entrance door sits in a later enclosed porch on the front north-west elevation of the northern cross wing. A string course of projecting bricks divides the storeys of the cross wings, which also have stone quoins to their outer corners. The southern cross wing has been raised with a two-light timber casement window inserted within the attic storey of its north-west gable.

The bake house, attached to the south-west side of the farmhouse, is a low one-and-a-half-storey structure largely built of stone rubble with a partially brick-built principal façade, dormers, and a clay pantile roof. To the north-west is the timber-framed wain house with close-studded timber frame, weatherboarding, and inserted windows. The two-storey former cider house is attached to the north-east elevation of the farmhouse, with a sandstone rubble ground floor and timber-framed upper level.

The farmhouse is accessed from the garden front via a doorway within the central range leading to a hallway. To the south is the kitchen containing a large fireplace for a range; the range itself has been removed but is preserved in the utility room of the bake house. The principal rooms to the north-west and south-west of the hallway have exposed timber ceiling beams that terminate short of the north-west side of these rooms. A carved timber within one of the walls rises through the first floor. The ceiling at first-floor level has been raised in the south-east range with small 19th-century fireplaces inserted within the bedrooms. Beneath the current roof of the farmhouse within the central range are the remains of earlier roof timbers including two chamfered principal rafters that span a narrower distance than the current roof, indicating that the central range has been extended to the north-east. The bake house internally retains a bread oven.

In front of the farmhouse is a boundary wall of red brick capped in stone and in places cement render, with a modern timber pedestrian gate. To the rear south-east of the farmhouse is a 19th-century cast-iron water pump.