Marchants Farmhouse

Marchants Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the early 17th century, with a later 17th-century rear wing. The front range was encased in flint and brick in the 19th century, featuring new porches and windows. The building has timber frames, with the front facade made of flint and brick dressings. The northern end is roughcast above the flint ground floor, while the ground floor of the rear wing is red brick with some blue headers, and the upper section has exposed timber framing with square panels and a cill height rail. The farmhouse has steep old red tile roofs and is a two-storey T-plan house facing east, set back from the road.

The front range has a two-cells, central-chimney, lobby-entry plan. The lower rear service wing, originally unheated, provided a new entrance and staircase against the older house, entered from the north, and includes a buttery, dairy, and milk house, with ladder access to an upper space for farm hands. The east front is almost symmetrical, featuring two windows on each floor and a central porch. The upper windows are three-light corbelled oriels with small gables above, while the ground floor has three-light flush transomed casements. There is a gabled part-glazed porch leading to a Gothick front door. The axial chimney has three flues with a corbelled top.

The rear wing consists of three structural bays, with small-pane sash windows on the timbered first floor and casements below. There is a gabled hood over a door in the northern angle with the front range. The dairy at the northwest has a window with a top-hung external shutter, and the southwest part has a stable door for horse access from the farmyard to the south, used in the 19th century. The interior features axial floor beams in the front range that are chamfered and stopped, a wide open fireplace in the hall, and cupboards within the narrowed fireplace of a smaller parlour. There is one heated chamber on the first floor, and a chimney was inserted in the rear wing only in the 20th century. The owner possesses deeds, the earliest of which is said to be from 1611.