Broadgate House

Broadgate House is a house dating from the 16th century, with extensions added in the 18th and 19th centuries and alterations in the 20th. It is timber-framed, with roughcast rendering and a roof mainly of handmade red clay tiles and some slate. The building consists of a three-bay main range aligned northwest to southeast, featuring an axial chimney stack in the middle bay, and a two-bay southeast crosswing, with a 20th-century external chimney stack against the southeast wall. The main range was extended approximately 3 metres to the southwest in the 18th century, and further southwest wings were added at both ends, creating a half-H plan. Additional 18th-century chimney stacks are situated against the southeast walls of both sections. The southwest pitch of the main roof is slate-covered, with a 19th-century single-storey extension with a slate roof and a 20th-century single-storey extension with a flat roof located between the wings.

The northeast elevation features a central glazed porch with a side door dating back to the 20th century. Above the porch is an 18th-century double-hung sash window with 16 lights, and a four-window range of 20th-century casements, most with rectangular leaded glazing. The roof is hipped.

The interior includes a plain, stop-chamfered axial beam with lamb's tongue stops to the northwest of the main stack and two large wood-burning hearths, both reduced in size. A ground-floor room to the southeast of the main stack has an axial beam boxed in, an 18th-century doorcase with beaded jambs and foliate carving, and an 18th-century six-panel door to the southeast. The ground floor of the crosswing features a boxed-in binding beam and is fully lined with 18th-century panelling, with 20th-century reproduction panelling in the southwest extension. The posts of the crosswing are jowled, and the roof exhibits a clasped purlin construction with arched wind bracing. The southwest extension of the main range incorporates a fine 18th-century staircase with scrolled tread ends, slender twist-turned balusters, fluted round posts, and moulded handrails. A further 18th-century doorcase, with a plain pilaster, moulded cornice, and dentilled architrave, leads to an early 19th-century half-glazed door, now enclosed within a 20th-century extension.

The house has a complex architectural history, and while it currently faces northeast, there is some indication of a previously concealed jetty at the southwest end of the crosswing, suggesting it originally faced southwest. The doorcase and staircase hall confirm it faced southwest by the 18th century. Limited visible remnants of the 16th/17th-century phase remain in the main range, excluding the chimney stack, which would have formed a lobby-entrance, and the one exposed axial beam. The roof of this section has been rebuilt.