Park Farmhouse

Park Farmhouse, Doddinghurst

This is a house of complex build history spanning from around 1400 to the 20th century. It is timber-framed with weatherboarding, render and colour wash, a peg-tiled roof half-hipped at the west end, and is arranged in an L-plan across two storeys. The irregular facade results from the present front originally being the back of the building. All windows have been replaced in the 20th century with wooden casements, most featuring single median glazing bars.

The main range has on the ground floor a 2-light window and 20th-century glazed French doors, and on the first floor one 2-light, one 3-light and one small 2-light window. The cross-wing has a 20th-century large lean-to porch on the west side with a boarded front door on the west face with full-length side light. The south gable end of the cross-wing has one small 2-light window and two full-sized 2-light windows; the first floor has one large 3-light window. An outshut to the east of the cross-wing has one 2-light window.

The interior reveals the building's long development. The cross-wing is a two-bay structure from an early hall house of around 1400. It retains one ogee head of a service door and seating for a second. A jetty to the north, now at the rear of the house, has jetty posts and brackets made unusually from single pieces of wood, with evidence of curved tension bracing to the original jetty doubled in the gable. The jetty joists are laid flat, original and lodged over the binding joist, though rear joists may be renewed. The ground-floor front wall now sits directly under the original overhang and contains diamond mullion holes and a shutter groove for a window, possibly indicating the original wall was cut free and moved to its present position. A small mullioned window survives at the north end of the east side wall. Large peg holes in the studs may mark the site of a weaver's warping frame. On the first floor are shutter grooves and mullion holes for a double window over the jetty, with small braces to the centre cambered tie-beam providing headroom. The roof is of simple collar rafter type, hipped at the south end, with no crown posts or side purlins. Collars are barefaced dovetailed to the rafters and pegged with facetted heads. The west exterior face of the cross-wing, facing the hall, bears heavy sooting from the open fire of the original medieval hall, now demolished. This sooting extends into the cross-wing rafters; some have been reset, and one shows evidence of a double collar and mortice for the bonnet of a smoke gablet.

The main range is a mid-16th-century replacement of the old hall, comprising a two-cell, two-storey block. The central room has a ceiling of flat laid joists with reduced soffit tenons. The bridging joist and common joists feature unusual stop-chamfers of step type with a sweep back at the outer edges. The chimney bay is wider than the later inserted brick stack; the bridging joist shows sooting, and infilling joists are secondary, possibly indicating a smoke void or the site of an earlier timber chimney. The high end cross wall of the central room bears chiselled Roman numerals, petal-shaped scratched designs and traces of red painting on the studs. An original doorway passes through the partition. The northwest corner has large peg holes in the studs, possibly from a warping frame. First-floor primary wall bracing may be later rebuilding. The wall plate contains a face-halved and bladed scarf joint. Evidence of mullioned windows survives on each side of both rooms. The partition wall studding bears chiselled Roman numerals. The roof is of queen post, clasped side purlin type with wind braces, though many rafters have been reset and show sooting with disused collar joints similar to the cross-wing. The side purlins are made from old top plates with rafter seatings; one contains small rectangular mortices for the mullions of a large medieval window. The rebuilding apparently involved reusing old hall timbers in new work where they would not be visible from below. One rafter may be from a timber chimney, and several minor joints and recesses accommodate wattle work.

In the early 17th century, a brick stack was inserted into the chimney bay, with brick walling built around the service door head on the hall side, leaving the rear of the door head exposed. Back-to-back fireplaces occupy the ground floor, with the cross-wing fireplace having two flues and a single fireplace facing the later block on the first floor. All fireplaces have timber lintels. The cruciform chimney has four shafts of red brick in mixed bond. The cross-wing was extended by one bay to the rear in timber-framing; the floor of the upper storey consists of deep-sectioned joists with diminished haunched soffit tenons (common joists now removed).

Around 1700, a lean-to timber-framed extension was added to the east of the cross-wing with rudimentary framing.

The house is surrounded in part by a rectangular moat.