12, Trooper Road

This is a late 16th-century house with a later 18th-century west wing. The house is timber-framed with brick sills; the first floor timbers are exposed with red brick infill, while the ground floor is brick-cased or rebuilt. The west wing is red brick in a Flemish bond pattern, with exposed vertical timbers in the east gable. Both sections have steep roofs covered in old red tiles. The main house is long and narrow, two storeys high, and has three bays facing south, with the east gable facing the road. The taller, deeper west wing projects to the south, potentially originally built as a separate house. There are three windows on each floor, with the west wing primarily lit from the west side. A lean-to porch provides access from the south, next to a large projecting south-side chimney. The main entrance is centrally located on the south side, to the left of the middle window. Most windows are flush casements, but there’s an old mullioned window on the first floor in the middle bay. The timber frame features wide-spaced storey-height studs. The east end has a three-light flush casement window with small panes and a plank door to the right. Internally, the framing reveals jowled posts, wide-spaced studs with straight tension braces, cambered tie-beams, a clasped-purlin roof, and a collar truss with vertical struts and diminished principals. Inside, the east part has hollow stops to chamfered axial beams, a large open fireplace backing onto the south entrance, suggesting the hall was in the west part with a cross-passage at its east end. A central chimney runs through the east part of the house, with back-to-back fireplaces and a staircase beside it on the south side, entered from a west room. This chimney was built to the east of a main roof truss. The west wing is divided into a large south room and a narrow north service room, with a staircase and partitions.