Springmede

House. Built in the early 17th century. It is timber-framed, with plaster walls and a roof of handmade red clay tiles. The house has three bays facing east, with a central chimney stack forming a lobby entrance, and an original rear wing to the right.

The house is two stories high with attics. The ground floor has five casement windows added in the 20th century. The first floor has three casement windows and two more within feature gables, also 20th century replacements. There is a 17th-century moulded door, originally an internal door, with grouped diagonal shafts that have been rebuilt. Three pairs of original bargeboards remain; the left feature gable has a guilloche design, the right return gable features a design of linked circles and rectangles, and the right feature gable is similarly decorated. The left ground floor room has chamfered axial and transverse beams with lamb’s tongue and notch stops. The joists are plain and originally plastered on their undersides. There is an elaborately moulded jowl with a serrated lower edge. The right ground floor room has lamb's tongue and bar stops on the transverse beam, lamb’s tongue and notch stops on the axial beam, and plastered joists, with lamb’s tongue stops on the mantel beam.

The rear wing has plain horizontal joists. The left first floor room contains blocked frieze windows, jowls of an ogee profile, a brick hearth with a depressed arch and recessed spandrels (formerly plastered), and a band of painted plaster above, depicting black circles filled with red over a white background. The right first floor room has a similar hearth, still plastered, with original plasterwork above consisting of repeating designs of an urn, a vine, and strapwork. Both first floor rooms have straight bracing set within the studding. On the stair to the attic, an original window remains with a single ovolo mullion. A number of original and early doors with their fittings are also present throughout the house. The rear wing has a roof with clasped purlins.

The house retains a remarkable number of original external and internal decorative features. The variety of chamfer stops and joist sections provides exceptional historical interest, illustrating the evolution of floor design during the first 20 years of the 17th century.