Farmhouse at Wild Farm, known as White House

Farmhouse at Wild Farm, known as White House

This house was built in the late 18th or early 19th century. It is constructed of handmade red brick, painted white, with a roof covering of plain red tiles and bonnet tiles at the hips.

The house has a rectangular plan with central projecting bays at the front and rear. A two-storey extension on the west end, probably added in the 1930s, is not included in the listing.

The three-bay house is in the late-Georgian villa style. It has two storeys and an attic under a hipped roof with a dentilled eaves cornice and flat-headed dormer windows wholly within the roof space on the east and west slopes. The principal south elevation has a central projecting gabled entrance bay with dentilled verges and a dentilled cornice across the gable, giving the impression of a pediment. This is lit by a semi-circular attic window. The six-panelled door has been adapted to have four glazed upper panels and is set within a concave moulded doorcase with a semi-circular fanlight. The semi-circular canopy above has a coffered soffit and is supported by scroll brackets. Each bay is lit by six-over-six pane sash windows with moulded architraves set flush in the wall and flat gauged brick arches. Four of the panes in the first-floor window in the central bay have been replaced by a single pane without glazing bars.

The rear north elevation has a similar composition except that there is a six-over-six pane sash window in place of the front door, and the flanking bays have semi-circular French windows with four panes to each leaf. Some of the glazing bars have been removed and the glass smashed. The east side is lit on the ground floor by a six-over-six pane sash window, whilst the window above is bricked up.

The interior is arranged on a cross-shaped plan with each arm of the cross occupied by a room with an interconnecting door, creating a circular access route around the central semi-circular winding stair. This rises to the attic around a closed well that forms a semi-circular recess on the north wall of the entrance hall, ground floor and attic landings. The west rooms on the ground and first floors have a wide bow-shaped recess on the inner wall in which the fireplaces are situated.

The interior retains a good deal of joinery, fixtures and fittings, including parquet floors in the hall and ground-floor east room, narrow wooden floorboards in most other rooms, picture rails and some skirting boards. The moulded doorcases survive; those on the first floor retain panelled soffits and jambs, and four-panelled doors. The window in the ground-floor north room has panelled jambs and tripartite panelling below. There are numerous fireplaces which mostly have relatively plain moulded surrounds and boarded up grates, some with later tiled insets. The fireplace in the first-floor south room is more elaborate, with a mantelshelf supported by brackets, a three-panelled frieze and fluted jambs which recede towards the bottom creating an elongated curve.

The four rooms in the attic have plank and batten doors with upright handles. The lath and plaster has been removed from the collar rafter roof, leaving exposed timbers which retain the nails originally used to fix the laths. The small cellar retains a workbench with a slate counter.