Moor Hall Farmhouse

Moor Hall Farmhouse is a house that dates back to the 16th century or earlier, originally built as a hall-house. In the 17th century, it was reroofed, a floor was inserted, and a stair turret was added on the east side. The house was altered and extended on the east side, with the northern end faced in red brick during the mid-19th century. It served as the manor house of Moorhall Manor, which belonged to Merton Priory from 1291 until 1544, when it was acquired by Sir Henry Parker and subsequently passed to the Newce family, who held it in 1611.

The farmhouse is timber-framed and plastered, consisting of two storeys beneath a steeply pitched gabled roof covered in old red tiles. The red brick parts added in the 19th century are located on the east side and facing the northern end. The building measures 70 feet long and has a four-room layout, with the end rooms being shorter. The northern short room was reconstructed in the 19th century to serve as an entrance and staircase hall. The northern long room and southern short room feature axial chamfered beams. The remaining soot-blackened rafters in the roof and the different floor construction suggest that the southern long room was originally an open hall. A central chimney from the 18th century, which is off-axis, may have replaced an earlier timber-framed chimney.

The main front of the house was originally on the west side, with a plastered low sill and a bold 17th-century plaster eaves cove featuring roll moulding at the springing. The windows on the ground floor are a mix of three- and two-light 19th-century wooden casement windows, with four on the first floor cut into the cove, three on the ground floor, and a French window beneath a tiled lean-to hood. An external gable chimney is located on the southern gable. The northern front has two bargeboarded gables, 19th-century recessed sash windows, a gabled brick porch on the right, and a canted bay window with a tiled roof on the left.

Inside, timbers are exposed, particularly in the close-studded partitions with wattle and daub panels in the roof space, as well as heavy swept jowled posts and chamfered tie beams on the first floor. There is an 18th-century moulded wooden fire surround with a dentilled cornice that has been moved from the room over the hall to the northeast room on the ground floor. Additionally, there are remains of a barrel-vaulted brick cellar beneath the eastern extension. The roof features clasped purlins with lap-jointed collars, which do not align with the bay divisions of the older walls and partitions.