Woodlands

Woodlands is a house of mid-16th-century origin with 17th-century alterations and 20th-century modifications. It is timber-framed, plastered and weatherboarded, with a peg-tiled roof and adopts a T-plan comprising a hall and cross-wing.

The exterior presents two storeys. The cross-wing roof is hipped back from front to gablet, while the hall range roof stands slightly higher. A rear out-shut occupies the internal angle, with a front ground floor lean-to addition containing a porch and extension to the cross-wing. Red brick stacks rise at both end walls: a major stack of 17th-century date at the northwest and a minor stack dating to around 1800.

On the northeast front elevation, the ground floor of the hall range and 20th-century extension is weatherboarded with a moulded cornice of early 19th-century and 20th-century date spanning the whole front. The hall contains a 20th-century 3-light casement window with glazing bars, each casement divided 2x2 panes. A 20th-century addition features a casement window with upper lights and a boarded stable-type door with upper glazed panel. The porch has side fixed glazing with glazing bars in a 3x3 pattern. The addition's roof is peg-tiled and hipped back round the projecting cross-wing. The first floor of the hall range displays some mock applied timbering and old pargeted plaster towards the cross-wing, continuing across it with chevron decoration. Two outer 3-light casement windows and one central 2-light casement window, each with 19th-century beaded frames and glazing bars of 2x2 panes, light this level.

The southwest rear elevation shows the hall and cross-wing in evidence, with roofing similar to the front elevation and entirely 20th-century weatherboarded. The ground floor has two windows: one 20th-century 3-light and one 19th-century 2-light with narrow central beaded frame and weatherboarded division in the cross-wing. A 20th-century boarded door opens from the out-shut, and a projecting 20th-century fireplace lean-to in peg-tile stands at the west corner. The first floor features a 2-light window to the cross-wing and a lower 2-light window in the lean-to with 19th-century beaded frame.

The southeast end elevation is plastered with some remaining pargeting of zigzag stippling. A large central stack with two shouldered reductions in width, laid mainly in stretcher bond, dominates this face. The northwest end elevation is weatherboarded and carries a stack of around 1800 in matching burnt bricks with one sided single-shouldered reduction in width. The cross-wing hips are evident here with the hall roof gable above. A single ground floor casement window with glazing bars (2x2 panes) provides light.

The interior reveals the framing of the hall and cross-wing, particularly on the first floor, with considerable use of elm alongside oak for principal members. Waney edges are present, suggesting a limited budget for the original building. The cross-wing was originally jettied, now obscured by 20th-century additions. Opposed doors in the hall and cross-wing angle indicate the original cross-entry site.

The ground floor hall contains an inserted 17th-century floor with lamb's-tongue chamfered stops. The principal 17th-century fireplace was restored with a reused oak lintel bearing older 15th or early 16th-century mouldings of roll in a hollow chamfer.

The first floor displays central trusses of both hall and cross-wing with arched braces. Internal arched and tension bracing occurs in the cross-wing. A tension-braced central truss supports the hall, and the hall and cross-wing partition frame is similarly braced. The hall features shouldered jowled posts. The principal chamber window on the front of the cross-wing is shown by a shutter groove and contains five large diamond mullion holes. The hall roof is sooted with evidence of a former crown post system; the post of the central truss bore 4-way braces. Roof members are of elm. The southeast terminal crown post continues to the apex as a king strut, though joints reveal crown post usage.

The house demonstrates the persistence of the open hall form for ordinary people well after the more fashionable had adopted individually heated chambers in fully storeyed houses. Secondary nailed collars, below medieval ones but above the present first floor ceiling of the hall, likely belong to high-ceilinged rooms contrived during the early 19th-century general refurbishment when the house received its surviving older window frames. Woodlands and Rosebrook form a group of related buildings.