Sharlowes Farm House

Sharlowes Farm House, Flaunden

A farmhouse now used as a private house, with origins around 1500 as an open hall house with two cross wings. The building has undergone significant alterations and additions over the centuries, making it a complex structure spanning from the medieval period through to the 20th century.

The house follows a U-plan medieval arrangement, facing south. The timber-framed structure was cased in red brick, with the hall range featuring a distinctive diaper pattern in blue headers. The roof is covered in steep old red tiles. The principal elevation presents a 1½-storey former open hall flanked by two-storey gabled wings that project to the rear. Set back from the road, the south front contains three windows and an entrance positioned at the lower (west) end of the hall range.

The east parlour wing was rebuilt in the late 16th century with lower floor and ceiling levels than the original hall. The mid-17th century saw significant internal reorganisation: a floor and chimney were inserted in the hall, with a new stair behind the chimney replacing separate stairs that had formerly served each wing. The west wing was cased and extended to the rear in the 19th century, whilst the south room of the east wing was extended east in the 20th century with the rear part of its east wall rebuilt at that time. The front elevation was further altered in the 18th century with the addition of a brick casing dated '1768' cut into the hall range.

The south front features a wide cross-passage with former axially divided service rooms opening to the west. Entry is gained through a C18 doorway with a flat hood, reset in a C20 lean-to porch with a six-panel door. Above the door is a small two-light leaded casement window. The principal windows are three-light C18 casements with small rectangular leaded panes and iron opening frames, set within segmental brick arches. A gabled dormer rises through the eaves in the middle. A large external red brick chimney stands at the west end, with a small brick extension containing French doors at the east end.

Interior

The interior preserves the timber frame of an open hall measuring two unequal bays. Evidence of smoke blackening is most prominent in the west bay. The central truss is a chamfered arched-braced collar supporting a clasped-purlin roof with arched wind-braces. A wide cross-passage to the west features two doors opening into a two-storey service cross-wing spanning two bays. This wing displays jowled posts, a clasped-purlin roof, curved wind-braces, a cambered tie-beam on curved braces, collar and king-strut trusses, and wide spaced storey-height studs in the walls.

The east parlour cross-wing is divided into two rooms on each floor with a cellar beneath the north end. The external faces to the east and northeast expose heavy three-bay timber framing. Posts are jowled, with cambered tie-beams, straight tension braces, and a clasped-purlin roof featuring curved wind-braces.

Fragments of wall painting survive in both first-floor rooms of the east wing. The north room contains a monochrome allegorical figure with a frieze inscription, whilst the south room displays less elaborate decoration. These paintings have been dated to 1575–1590.

The mid-17th-century insertion of the floor and chimney in the hall can be dated by the stepped cyma stop to the deep chamfered beam. The brick chimneys serving the east cross-wing likely date from its later 16th-century rebuilding. The west external chimney is of 17th or early 18th-century date, predating the mid-18th-century panelled room in the southwest, which features a pointed arched recessed cupboard with shaped shelves set into the old chimney, a moulded dado rail and ovolo moulded panelling.

A fine late 17th-century bolection moulded fire surround has been re-used in the north extension to the west wing. Folding ovolo moulded panelled shutters survive inside a window in the hall. The front room of the east wing retains grooves for vertically sliding internal shutters stored below the cill level of its three-light C18 casement window. The rear upper room of the east wing has an 18th-century moulded plaster ceiling cornice and a two-panel raised and fielded door.