Deal Tree Farmhouse

Deal Tree Farmhouse is a house of 15th-century origin, with significant alterations and extensions from the 17th and 18th centuries, and further modifications in the 20th century. It is timber-framed and rendered with 20th-century pargeting, combined with cement block sections that are also rendered. The roof is peg-tiled at the front but has flat 20th-century tiles at the rear.

The building follows a U-plan, with a principal rectangular block and two later rear wings positioned at the west and east ends. Although essentially two storeys, there is a false attic mullioned window at the rear.

The south front elevation is the main façade. All windows are 20th-century replacements with casement frames containing small rectangular leaded panes. The ground floor displays, from west to east, a bay window with five casement lights and a single side light on a brick base with peg-tiled roof, followed by a two-light casement window, a 20th-century timber and brick porch with a gabled peg-tiled roof (featuring three front and five side lights on each side, with a boarded door), and a three-light casement window followed by a single casement window. The first floor contains two three-light casement windows to the west and east, with a central glazed aperture featuring two false mullions behind, plus one three-light and one two-light window.

The rear north elevation is more complex. The west cross-wing has a ground-floor French window with leaded panes and a gable above containing a glazed aperture with false mullions. The central block displays two two-light casement windows and three small fixed lights on the ground floor, with two single casements and a central glazed aperture with five false mullions on the first floor. The east cross-wing has a three-light casement window and a porch with two-light casement. The east gable end contains two ground-floor single casements with glazing bars (3x3 panes) and a slit window of seven panes between them; a 20th-century porch with rendered gable roof adjoins, with seven-paned glazing at front and two lights at rear, and a two-light casement on the first floor. The west end has two ground-floor two-light casements with glazing bars (one 6x3 panes, one 6x4), and first-floor glazing of one two-light casement with 6x3-pane bars and a seven-paned slit window in the gable.

The interior, although heavily restored and reworked, reveals the structure of a medieval hall house comprising a two-bayed hall with storeyed end bays. Some sooting of the hall timbers survives in joint recesses. The central truss of the hall is considerably offset towards the low end and has the appearance of a spere truss when viewed from the cross entry. The central tie-beam is cambered with pegs for a crown-post and a lower fillet connecting rising braces; the main posts are unjowled. The cross-entry doors are front segment-headed and rear straight-headed. The hall high end (east) rear wall contains mullion holes and a rebate marking the site of a window, though front-wall evidence has been lost. Edge halved and bridled scarf joints appear in the wall plate above both hall windows. The high-end storeyed bay has a gable-end frame with a tie-beam interrupted by framing to accommodate a two-light medieval window at one-and-a-half storey height, each light having two mullions and two shutter grooves running from the centre outwards. Tension bracing appears beneath this window in the gable. The low-end storeyed bay is largely gone, but arched bracing survives in the north-side wall on ground and first floors. Back-to-back fireplaces were inserted into the cross passage in the 17th century, replacing service doors to create a lobby entrance system. The fireplace lintel is decorated with a Tudor flattened arch and stylised leaf in the spandrels. The inserted floors are contemporary with the fireplaces and feature reduced soffit tenons and diminished haunches. Side walls have clamps for joists.

Although the house walls have been raised in the 20th century and false mullion windows have been inserted, the building is of a type found in East Anglia, where the storeyed bays are aligned with the hall and the interrupted tie-beam system is employed at the gable ends to accommodate two floors within one-and-a-half storeys. The low end of the house was doubtless framed similarly. The building is comparable to Sabines Farm, Sabines Green, Navestock.