The Old House

The Old House is a house dating from the early 16th century, with alterations in the middle and late 16th century, and further changes in the 17th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. The ground floor is timber framed and replaced in brick, with a roughcast rendered upper floor. Later additions are of brick, all painted white, and the roof is covered in plain tiles. Brick stacks are present. Originally, it was a 4-bay open hall house, with a parlour on the left and a lower end, including a buttery and pantry, on the right. The lower end was floored in the mid-16th century, and a floor was inserted and the roof raised over the hall and parlour in the late 16th century. Further alterations in the 17th century included the addition of a rear stair turret and a cellar. A 19th-century lean-to addition was made to the left (parlour) end, another addition to the right end, and the house was subdivided into two cottages. In the early 20th century, it was returned to a single house.

The front elevation has 20th-century leaded casement windows, some with two or three lights. The left section is two storeys high with two bays and end stacks, and has a side outshut on the left. The right section is of one storey and attic, with three bays (plus one) separately roofed, a door on the left in a canopied architrave, three gabled dormers, and a ridge stack. The rear features a gabled stair turret, a lean-to porch on the left, and various 20th-century windows, including one gabled dormer.

Inside, chamfered beams and old joists with carpenters’ marks remain. Timber framing survives on the first floor; in the right-hand section it is of substantial timbers with thickly-jowelled wall posts and one visible tension brace; in the left-hand section the timber is lighter, with arch-braced wall posts and some surviving mid to late 17th-century wall paintings. The roof has old rafters and trusses, with re-ordered rafters at the left end. The timbers over the former hall are smoke-blackened, and the original hall central truss has chamfered details.

A later listing describes a 17th-century building with whitewashed roughcast and brick, old tiled roofs. It features two storeys on the left, one storey and attics on the right with three gabled dormers and five flush lattice casement windows. A cut bracketed doorhood is present, and the building has a timber frame.