Bennett'S Farmhouse

Bennett's Farmhouse is a house dating from the 17th century, with extensions added in the 18th and early 19th centuries and renovated around 1986. The house is timber-framed, with the ground floor clad in plastered brick and the upper floors weatherboarded. The roof has a mix of machine-made and handmade red clay tiles. The main range has four bays facing south, with an axial stack in the second bay from the left end, forming a lobby-entrance, and an external stack at the right end. A parallel, two-storey range extends to the rear, dating from the 18th or early 19th century, and a single-storey wing was added to the rear left in the 19th century.

The windows on the ground floor are largely 20th century replacements, including a casement, two sashes, and a sash in the position of a former front door, all set within a 20th century gabled porch. The first floor also has three 20th century sashes. The main range has a roof of machine-made tiles; the rear range has a hipped roof of handmade tiles, and the rear wing a roof of machine-made tiles. All windows were renewed in tropical hardwood, in earlier styles, around 1986.

A wide, plain boarded door, sand-blasted and retaining original hinges and internal fittings, is found on the left-hand elevation of the rear range. The interior reveals unjowled posts. In the left bay, an axial beam is supported by an inserted post, with plain joists of vertical section jointed with soffit tenons. The soffits have been hacked to provide increased headroom. The hearth has been rebuilt in the 20th century, alongside a wide wood-burning hearth with jambs and seat recesses, original and re-pointed. A transverse beam and similar joists are present to the right, while a ground-floor partition has been replaced with open studding of old timber. The right bay features a chamfered axial beam, with missing stops, and thin, plain joists, plus a 20th century hearth. The front wallplate has a simple edge-halved scarf near the left end. The rear wallplate has several scarf joints, indicating the reuse of earlier timber. An original window of early glazed type, with one ovolo mullion and mortices for two saddle bars, has been sand-blasted. An altered 17th-century rebated and moulded door to the attic is now reduced to two planks. The roof structure includes a clamped purlin roof with straight collars. Much of the exposed timber has been destructively sand-blasted, with arched braces introduced as decoration. Two sections of 17th-century oak panelling have been repositioned to be horizontal instead of vertical.