The Old Rectory

TL 3528 ASPENDEN THE STREET (south side)

8/10 The Old Rectory (formerly listed as 19.10.51 The Rectory)

GV II

Rectory, now a private house. Late C15 or early C16 Wealden house, late C16 inserted floor with jetty linking wings, W end chimney and former central chimney in hall. Early C17 E-end chimney and service extension beyond. Small 2-storeys gabled tower added on S in late C17, possibly a small stair turret originally. Renovated c1870 (VCH (1914) 17) with 2 storeys gabled larder wing on N side of kitchen, rear lateral chimney to hall, and new windows at rear. Timber frame plastered with fan pargetting and 2 roses in relief on rear turret. Painted brick walls to lower E extension. Plastered brick N larder extension. Steep old red tile roofs. Red brick chimneys. A fine 2-storeys 3-cells former open-hall house, with storeyed ends jettied to the front, under a continuous gabled roof, spere-truss and clasped purlin hall roof. Subsequent alterations in C16 involved the addition of a heavily moulded beamed floor in the hall extending to support a jettied front on the N side linking the older jetties of the wings into a continuous front jetty on curved knee-braces. Also an external W gable fireplace to the parlour with a double-trefoil recess in the brickwork over the lintel. The E service bay beyond the cross-passage was converted to a kitchen in the early C17 and a one and a half storeys, 2- cells, service wing built extending to E, later clad in brickwork on S and E. Jettied N front has 3 windows on each floor and broad battened door in C18 moulded surround under small-paned fanlight between heavy original brackets marking the screens passage. 3-light mullioned leaded casements, in shallow projecting rectangular bays on ground floor. W part windows renewed in wood. Lower service wing set back at E and obscured by tiled and plastered gabled larder wing. Long 4-light casement to service wing. Interior has exposed timbers, chamfered cross- beam and upper part of spere-truss with curved brace cut with mortice for rail for cove up to wall plate and profile of cove cut in the side of the brace. Doorway at 1st floor on SW for former garderobe. Elaborate roll-mouldings to axial and cross- beams of inserted floor in hall. Clasped-purlin roofs to wings. In 1709 terrier described as of 'timber, tiled with 3 rooms, of a floor above and below, garratts over 2 parts, kitchen laid with paving stones, rest boarded. Cellar. Small house adjoining E end ... brick built one side, timber the other, thatched'. Of exceptional interest as a purpose built rectory in the form of a late medieval Wealden house with C16 and C17 additions. (RCHM (1911) 41: VCH (1914) 17: RCHM Typescript).

Listing NGR: TL3544228200