Ware Farmhouse

Ware Farmhouse is an early 16th-century hall house, significantly altered in the late 16th century, and with extensions added in the 19th and 20th centuries. The house is timber-framed, with plastered and weatherboarded walls and a tiled roof. It originally comprised a hall of two bays aligned northeast-southwest, and a three-bay parlour or solar crosswing at the southwest end, which is jettied on the southeast side. The service end of the building is missing. A chimney stack was inserted into the northeast bay of the hall, and a floor was added in the late 16th century. Later extensions are located to the northwest and northeast. The house has three external chimney stacks and is two storeys high with attics; the crosswing roof is half-hipped. On the ground floor are three 20th-century casement windows, and a 20th-century gabled porch. The first floor has one 20th-century casement window above the jetty, and another in a gabled dormer. The timber framing is partly exposed internally. Features include jowled storey posts, curved tension bracing trenched to the inside of the studs, and one arched brace to the central tiebeam of the hall. A doorhead in the partition between the hall and parlour has a flat arch. The hall roof has been rebuilt with a clasped purlin construction, while the crosswing roof was originally of crownpost construction, although the crownpost on the southeast tiebeam is missing, with the others not visible. An exceptionally large binding-joist is located between the middle and southeast bays of the hall, with the inscription "Memento mori" painted in white letters on a brown ground on the southeast side; the lettering is believed to date from the 18th or early 19th century. The common joists are of square and near-square section. The brickwork of the inserted stack in the hall is fully exposed.