Rayne Hatch Farmhouse

House. Dating to circa 1570, the farmhouse has undergone alterations in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is timber framed and has plaster walls, covered by a roof of handmade red plain tiles. The building has five bays facing southeast, with a later 16th-century chimney stack to the left of the centre of the front wall. A single-storey extension of red brick was added in the 19th century to the rear of the right bay. The house is two storeys high. On the ground floor, there is one 19th-century casement window with some handmade glass, and two 20th-century casements. The first floor has two 19th-century casements and one 20th-century casement. A six-panel door, with the top two panels glazed, is set within a 20th-century gabled porch. The framing includes jowled posts and heavy studding, with curved tension bracing visible in one cross-wall. There are chamfered axial beams with short lamb's tongue stops, alongside plain joists of horizontal section (visible in one bay, with small secondary chamfers). The binding beam to the right of the stack is supported on a half-height jowl with an ogee profile, which in turn supports the axial beam to its right, indicating that the current stack replaced an earlier timber-framed chimney. A large wood-burning hearth faces to the right, blocked for a 20th-century grate, with a blocked 18th-century grate to the rear and a 20th-century grate to the left. A small lobby behind the stack contains fielded pine panelling, one fielded two-panel pine door, and a recessed cupboard with fluted jambs, a spheroid head, and profiled shelves, all dating from the 18th century. The tiebeam one bay from the left end is chamfered with step stops. A scarf of indeterminate bladed type is visible in the rear wallplate, partly covered. The roof has a claspéd purlin structure; it is largely original but includes additional softwood. The roof of the right bay has been rebuilt in softwood. The combination of step stops, the short curvature of the lamb's tongue stops, and other constructional features allow for a detailed dating. The manor of Rayne Hatch passed from Edward Jackson to his son John in 1569; the house may have been built around this time.