White Hall

White Hall is a farmhouse dating from the late 16th or early 17th century, located on the south side of High Street in Little Wilbraham. The projecting wing to the front, which contains a porch at ground floor level and a room above, is probably contemporary with the main house or perhaps slightly later, around 1620. Late in the 17th century or early in the 18th century, a further wing was added to the rear, probably to serve as a kitchen.

The house is timber-framed on a high brick sill and plaster rendered. The rear wall and one gable end were cased in yellow brick during the 19th century. The roof is steeply pitched, with the rear roof at a more acute angle. The roof tiles are 20th century, except for reused tiles at the rear. An original ridge stack of red brick is present.

The house is two storeys tall and follows an original three bay, lobby-entry plan. All fenestration consists of three windows at first floor and three at ground floor, all of 20th-century date and fitted with three-light horizontal sliding sashes. The original doorway and door survive, however. The door is typical of its period, with six panels featuring channelled and cyma moulded rails, stiles and muntins.

The two-storey porch is timber-framed and plaster rendered, with a brick sill at lower height than the main house. It has a tiled roof with the gable carried forward above an oriel window fitted with a matching three-light sash window. The ends of the wallplates have original faceted pendants. The porch is open on three sides, with similar surrounds and arches to the outer and side openings. The arches contain small pseudo key blocks with faceted pendants similar to those of the wallplate, set in a square head with raised panels to the spandrels. Plain capitals occur at impost height on the responds. Apart from the loss of one pendant, the three porch openings remain intact. Inside the porch are low settles with shaped ends, probably original.

The late 17th-century rear addition is timber-framed and faced with soft red brick, with some gault brick to the upper courses of the gable end. One wall may be partly timber-framed and plastered. The roof is tiled with a tumbled, parapetted gable end. A contemporary bread oven stands at the gable end.

Interior details date largely from the early to mid-17th century. The left-hand room, possibly originally the parlour, contains a smaller hearth with original ovolo moulded main beams and stop-chamfered joists. The central room or hall features an inglenook hearth with a mid-17th-century oak fireplace surround of pilasters supporting a mantel with rosette bosses to the soffit. The overmantel contains four sunken panels flanked by small pilasters, with a dentil cornice above and a frieze enriched with foliate bosses. The dentil cornice and panelling continue around the sides of the fireplace. A 17th-century roundel painted with a vase of roses was recently uncovered, around 1980, in a bedroom. The roof is original and of clasped side purlin construction with paired, straight wind bracing. A closed truss stands between the hall and the right-hand end bay, and the sequence of carpenters' marks on the rafters terminates at this point. This may indicate that this end of the house is an addition, or that this part of the roof has been rebuilt.