The Old Rectory

The Old Rectory is a timber-framed house, now a private residence, dating back to the late 15th or early 16th century, originally built in a Wealden style. In the late 16th century, a floor was inserted, creating a jetty linking the two wings and a western-end chimney was added to the main hall, along with a central chimney. A further service extension and eastern-end chimney were built in the early 17th century. A small, two-storey gabled tower was added to the south side in the late 17th century, possibly originally serving as a stair turret. The house was renovated around 1870. This included construction of a two-storey gabled larder wing to the north side of the kitchen, a rear lateral chimney to the hall, and new windows on the rear. The timber frame is plastered and decorated with fan pargetting, featuring two roses in relief on the rear turret. The lower eastern extension is built of painted brick, while the north larder extension is of plastered brick. The roof is steeply pitched and covered with old red tiles. The chimneys are brick.

The house originally comprised a fine two-storey, three-cell open-hall house, with storeyed ends that project forward under a continuous gabled roof. The hall features a spere-truss and clasped-purlin roof. Later 16th-century alterations included the addition of a heavily moulded beamed floor in the hall, extending to support a jettied front on the north side, connecting the older jetties of the wings into a continuous front jetty supported by curved knee-braces. An external gable fireplace was added to the parlor, featuring a double-trefoil recess in the brickwork above the lintel. The eastern service bay beyond the cross-passage was converted into a kitchen in the early 17th century, and a one-and-a-half-story service wing was built extending to the east, later clad in brickwork on the south and east sides.

The jettied north front has three windows on each floor, and a broad battened door within an 18th-century moulded surround, topped by a small-paned fanlight between heavy brackets marking the screens passage. Most windows are mullioned and leaded casements, set within shallow projecting rectangular bays on the ground floor; the western part of the windows have been renewed in wood. The service wing is set back to the east and mostly obscured by the tiled and plastered gabled larder wing. A long four-light casement window is present in the service wing. Internally, exposed timbers remain, including chamfered cross-beams and the upper part of the spere-truss, featuring curved braces cut with a mortise for a rail that extends to the wall plate, and a cove profile cut into the brace’s side. There’s a doorway on the first floor on the southwest side, leading to a former garderobe. Elaborate roll-mouldings feature on the axial and cross-beams of the inserted floor in the hall. The wings have clasp purlin roofs. An early 18th-century terrier described the property as a timber building with a tiled roof, three rooms, a floor above and below, grates over two parts, a kitchen paved with stones, the rest boarded, and a cellar. The building was noted to have a small, brick-built house adjoining the eastern end, with one side built of brick and the other of timber with a thatched roof. The house is considered of exceptional interest as a purpose-built rectory in the form of a late medieval Wealden house, incorporating 16th- and 17th-century additions.