Farmhouse at Finches Farm (Opposite Stevenage Road) is a Grade II listed building in the East Hertfordshire local planning authority area, England. First listed on 31 May 1984. Farmhouse. 3 related planning applications.
Farmhouse at Finches Farm (Opposite Stevenage Road)
- WRENN ID
- tall-belfry-soot
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- East Hertfordshire
- Constituency
- North East Hertfordshire MP: Chris Hinchliff (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 31 May 1984
- Type
- Farmhouse
- Address
- Farmhouse at Finches Farm (Opposite Stevenage Road), High Street, Walkern
- OS grid reference
- TL 288 259
- Coordinates
- 51.91685, -0.12826
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Finches Farm is a farmhouse located on the east side of High Street in Walkern, dating from the late 17th century and extended in the mid-19th century. The structure features a timber frame set on a stucco plinth with roughcast, and a red brick southeast wing that faces south. It has steep hipped roofs covered with old red tiles, and a catslide extension over a rear outshut.
This large house, which has two storeys and attics, faces west and includes a hipped rear stair turret and a two-storey later rear wing. The entrance is now through a parapeted red brick porch at the south end, although it was likely originally designed as a lobby-entry with a central chimney plan. A large 18th-century central chimney serves a corner fireplace in the south parlour and the hall in the centre, featuring a vaulted alcove on the sides of the stack on the ground floor. The northern room is still fitted and floored as a dairy, with a chimney inserted at the northwest corner.
The west front is nearly symmetrical, featuring three hipped dormer windows on the roof slope with two-light casements, four flush box sash windows on the first floor with 6/6 panes, and three windows on the ground floor. These include a two-light casement in the dairy, a rectangular hipped bay window with triple sashes in the middle room, and a similar triple sash window in the parlour. There is also a canted grey brick sash window on the south end. The front door, located in the porch, is half-glazed with coloured margin lights.
Inside, the farmhouse contains two 17th-century doors made of overlapping moulded planks leading to the dairy and game larder, a closed-string oak newel stair with square balusters that rises through three floors, and generally features two-panel late 18th-century doors.
Local climate
Farmhouse at Finches Farm (Opposite Stevenage Road) sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 710 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 86% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 78% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 35 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 57% of listed buildings. Of these, 17 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- Sale history — 1 transaction since 2016
- Related listed building consents — 3 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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