Petches Farmhouse

TL 63 SE FINCHINGFIELD PETCHES BRIDGE ROAD (west side)

3/70 Petches Farmhouse 2.5.55

• II

House. Circa 1300 and late C15, altered in C20. Timber framed, plastered, roofed with handmade red clay tiles. A manor house of complex and unusual plan. (1) 4-bay 2-storey range, c.1300, aligned NE-SW, with early C17 internal stack near the middle (2) parallel staircase hall to SE, C17 and later (3) parallel 3- bay 2-storey wing to SE, late C15, with jetty to SIi, and early C17 external stack at side (4) 2-bay open hall, late C15, to SE of SW end. Single-storey lean-to extensions to SE and in E angle. The house now faces NE, but the jetty suggests that originally it faced SW. 2 storeys, and hall of one storey with attics. NE elevation, 3 C20 casements on ground floor, 5 on first floor, of which one is in a gabled dormer. C20 door. 4 twisted octagonal shafts on main stack, restored. The interior of the NW range has unjowled posts, bridging beams with chamfered fillets, splayed and undersquinted scarfs in one wallplate and the collar-purlin, and crownpost roof with braces of wide section up to the collar-purlin and down to the tiebeams, incomplete. This is a strange building, and it has been suggested that originally it formed a first-floor hall. The 3- bay range, of similar length, has chamfered beams, heavy joists of wide section jointed to them with unrefined soffit tenons, and a crownpost roof with thin axial braces only, some missing. The hall has a side-purlin roof with conspicuous arched wind-bracing; the central tiebeam and braces to it have been removed. There are 2 early ledged 3-plank doors, one on its original strap- hinges, and one upper room is lined with early C17 oak panelling. RCHM 8.

Listing NGR: TL6977031774