Top Farm, North End

Top Farm, North End

This is a 17th-century farmhouse that was encased in the late 19th or early 20th century and extended in the late 20th century. The building is constructed with red brick external walls laid in Flemish bond, timber frame interior, and a tiled roof.

The house follows a lobby entrance plan with heated rooms on either side of the central stack and an unheated room to the far south. A wing was added to the north-east in the 1960s, creating an L-shaped plan.

The front facade features an off-centre porch beneath a tiled gablet and a four-panel timber entrance door. The ground floor has three horizontal sash windows beneath shallow-arched brick heads, whilst the first floor has three Yorkshire sashes with twelve lights and glazing bars. The off-centre ridge stack is decorated with dog tooth moulded brickwork and terracotta pots. During the 1960s, a central outshot with a tiled catslide roof and dormer window were constructed, along with a two-storey wing to the north-east. A single-storey outhouse is attached to the south-west gable end, featuring a tiled gable roof with Velux windows in both pitches and an off-centre brick stack. Later 20th-century alterations include casement windows inserted at front and rear elevations, weatherboard cladding, and two plank doors to the rear. The north-east elevation of the rear wing has 20th-century windows, whilst the gable end of the linear range is blind.

Internally, the original linear range retains an intact lobby entrance plan, though the winding stairs at the rear of the off-centre stack have been removed. Wall posts and midrails to the front and rear wall frames survive on the ground floor, except at the rear corner of the south-west gable end where brick has replaced the framing on both floors. Evidence of a diamond mullion window and shutter remains visible in the rear midrail of the left-hand room. Most of the sole plate has been replaced and all timber studs have been removed except those in the central rear wall frame at ground floor and two-thirds of the rear wall frame at first floor.

The principal timbers of the original cross-frames at the gable ends and room partitions survive on both floors. The floor frame comprises axial bridging beams with wide chamfers and lamb's tongue stops. The first floor retains all wall plate and tie beams, with wide floorboards in each room. The surviving timber frame throughout is of substantial scantling, jointed and pegged, with wattle and daub panels remaining in the rear wall frame and first floor cross-frames. The common coupled rafter roof structure has collars and purlins and is largely intact, with a later structure laid over it.

The original ground floor fireplaces have been infilled and their surrounds replaced in the 20th century. In the central room are two substantial timber plank doors with 17th-century round-ended strap hinges. The south-west room has pamment flooring; a door opens through the gable end into the single-storey extension, which although remodelled in the late 20th century retains a simple open fireplace and exposed tie beams to the roof. The first floor contains two late 18th-century two-panel doors and one late 19th-century fireplace in the northernmost room.

The 20th-century extensions are not of special interest.