Pear Tree Farmhouse

Pear Tree Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating back to approximately the 14th century, with significant alterations in the 17th and early 18th centuries, and constructed largely of red brick. It has a clay tiled roof with gabled ends, and brick stacks.

The original plan comprised a two-bay base-cruck hall with a spere-truss at the east end, and a two-bay, two-storey cross-wing with a crown-post roof at the west end. A floor and axial stack were inserted into the hall around the 17th century. The lower end of the hall was rebuilt and brick-clad in the early 18th century.

The south front is asymmetrical, with a 1:3 window arrangement. The left-hand side features a slightly projected gabled cross-wing. It has wooden mullion-transom windows with casements and horizontal glazing bars. Those within the cross-wing are set within cambered brick arches. A doorway in the centre is flanked by a reeded architrave and a dentilled cornice, and contains a six-panel door with glazed upper panels. A later glazed door is located to the right. The north-facing rear elevation incorporates a gabled cross-wing, a smaller gable-ended wing to its left, and a later outshut to the main range.

Inside, the hall retains its base-cruck structure, featuring a cambered collar with arch-braces and roll-and-fillet moulding with broach stops at the base. It has large square-set clasped purlins, a spere-truss at the low end of the hall with jowled arcade-posts, arch-braced to the cambered tie/collar. The roof structure above the tie/collar has been reconstructed, but reused some smoke-blackened common-rafters. The cross-wing retains an intact two-bay crown-post roof with curved four-way bracing to the tie-beams and crown-plate, jowled storey-posts with arch-braces to the tie-beams, and exposed wall framing with large curved braces. The hall's inserted floor has chamfered axial beams with cyma stops and unchamfered joists, and a fireplace with stone jambs and a chamfered timber bressumer with run-out stops. The kitchen has a large fireplace with a bressumer made from reused timber, moulded behind and with soffit mortices. An axial stack incorporates a small cupboard, and there's a 18th-century cupboard in the parlour. Panelled partitions are found in the hall chamber.