Petches Farmhouse

Petches Farmhouse is a house dating from around 1300 and the late 15th century, with alterations made in the 20th century. It is timber framed, plastered, and has a roof covered with handmade red clay tiles. The building has a complex and unusual layout.

The main part of the house is a 4-bay, 2-storey range from around 1300, aligned northeast to southwest, featuring an early 17th-century internal stack near the center. There is a parallel staircase hall to the southeast, dating from the 17th century and later. To the southeast, there is a 3-bay, 2-storey wing from the late 15th century, which has a jetty on the side and an early 17th-century external stack. Additionally, there is a 2-bay open hall from the late 15th century at the southeast end of the southwest range. The house has single-storey lean-to extensions to the southeast and in the eastern angle. Although the house now faces northeast, the jetty indicates that it originally faced southwest.

The northeast elevation features three 20th-century casements on the ground floor and five on the first floor, one of which is in a gabled dormer. There is also a 20th-century door and a main stack with four twisted octagonal shafts that have been restored.

Inside the northwest range, there are unjowled posts, bridging beams with chamfered fillets, and splayed and undersquinted scarfs in one wallplate and the collar-purlin. The roof has a crownpost structure with wide braces extending to the collar-purlin and down to the tiebeams, although it is incomplete. This unusual building may have originally included a first-floor hall. The 3-bay range has chamfered beams and heavy joists joined with unrefined soffit tenons, along with a crownpost roof that has thin axial braces, some of which are missing. The hall features a side-purlin roof with noticeable arched wind-bracing, and the central tiebeam and its braces have been removed. There are two early ledged 3-plank doors, one still on its original strap-hinges, and one upper room is lined with early 17th-century oak panelling.