Widfordbury Farm And Widfordbury House On West Of Churchyard

Widfordbury Farm and Widfordbury House is a house, now divided into two residences, dating from the 17th century or earlier. It features a timber-framed structure with roughcast and brick casing on the lower floor at the front, topped with steep old red tiled gabled roofs. The building is L-shaped, two storeys high with a cellar, and includes a single-storey kitchen extension from the 18th or 19th century on the west side.

The main range, known as Widfordbury Farm, runs east-west and faces south, with four windows that have modern casements, a two-storey canted bay, and a tile-hung apron. The east wing, referred to as Widfordbury House, is taller, has a hipped roof at the north end, and features early 19th-century flush sash windows with 8/8 panes on the south and west sides. It also has a moulded cusped bargeboard and a four-panelled door with a moulded architrave and flat hood supported by shaped brackets, along with a probable jetty on the south end underbuilt in colourwash brick. A large projecting side chimney is present on the east wing, and there is a modern panelled door centrally located under a flat hood.

The rear of the main block includes a two-storey projecting brick gable with a chimney and floorband, as well as a lean-to extension featuring a very tall buttress chimney. An old doorway in the east wall of the east wing at cellar level was reported by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments in 1911.

Historically, Widfordbury served as the manorial centre owned by Bermondsey Abbey until the Dissolution and was leased to the Adam family in 1548 as a farm. It is an important historic timber-framed house at the manorial centre, forming part of a picturesque group with its farm buildings and the church in this area of the Conservation Area. It is also a significant landscape feature when viewed across the Ash Valley from the north.