Baxter'S House

Baxter's House is a farmhouse, later adapted as a house, dating from the late 15th century. It has been significantly extended and remodelled in the early 17th century, with later additions and alterations. The building is timber framed with painted brick infill and a plain tile roof. Originally a T-plan design, it features a three-bay hall range to the left and a two-bay cross-wing to the right.

The hall range is single storey with an attic, while the cross-wing is two storeys and has an attic. The hall range’s timber framing features square and rectangular panels, with short straight tension braces, vertical posts above a brick-laid girding beam and V-struts from the collar to the gable end. The cross-wing juts out on the first floor and attic, incorporating carved corner brackets and moulded bressumers, which retain remnants of billet moulding. The gable has small square panels, and the framing includes long and short straight tension braces. The right return and back wall have been rebuilt in brick, painted on the front and rendered on the back. A former gabled 17th-century entrance porch, located in the angle between the ranges, retains turned balusters on the left side but is now covered by a continuous catslide roof extending from the cross-wing. It has a 20th-century nail-studded door. The window openings are irregular, with two 20th-century casements on the hall range and a 20th-century outer door to the left. There are two gabled eaves dormers on the hall range; the cross-wing features a six-light latticed mullioned and transomed wooden window on the ground floor, a four-light window on the first floor (both likely 17th-century), and a 20th-century latticed fixed-light window in the attic. A red brick ridge stack is located to the right of the hall range, with two octagonal shafts flanking a central diamond shaft. Single-storey 19th and 20th-century brick additions to the rear are of less architectural importance.

The interior of the main room in the hall range has massive spine and cross beams with deep chamfering, along with joists that have ogee stops. A room to the left of the outer door, marking the position of the former screens passage, also has substantial ceiling beams and heavy joists, but with straight-cut stops. The main room includes a large inglenook fireplace with a moulded lintel, and against the opposite wall, a square-panelled timber frame which reveals the location of the former bench at the upper end of the hall. The front room of the cross-wing contains early 17th-century rectangular oak panelling and a chamfered spine beam with ogee stops, along with 17th-century plank and muntin doors throughout. The hall range’s roof is cambered, with tie beams across three bays. The house was formerly the residence of Richard Baxter, the Puritan theologian, during the early 17th century.