The Rectory Farmhouse

The Rectory Farmhouse is a manor house, now a farmhouse, dating to the early 17th century, with alterations made in the 18th century and again between 1870 and 1873. Further alterations occurred in the 1930s when panelling was installed from Hammonds Farmhouse at Burge End. The house is constructed of clunch and red brick, with roughcast timber-framed gables, and has steep old red tile roofs.

Originally a symmetrical, E-plan house, likely formerly moated, it is set back beyond a forecourt and faces south. The design includes a two-storey gabled porch and projecting gabled wings. A single-storey, hipped 18th-century brewhouse extends to the west, and a gabled, roughcast timber-framed stair turret projects at the rear. The facade has four windows to each floor, with three- and four-light transomed flush casement windows. The porch has an arched brick opening and an original studded door set in a cyma moulded frame. The door is secured with bolts and bars, preventing it from being opened from the outside. A large, central 17th-century brick chimney, featuring five diagonal square shafts arranged in an L-shape to appear as nine from the front, is a notable feature. External sidewall chimneys with diagonal shafts are also present on the outer sides of each wing. A three-light transomed window is located at the rear of the staircase. Blocked large, three-light ovolo-moulded mullioned and transomed windows are set into the tie-beams of the roughcast rear gables. The rear gable of the west wing contains a wide, four-light, pointed wooden Gothick traceried window with leaded glazing, said to have originated from the local church during the Victorian period.

A room in the east wing incorporates panelling from Hammonds Farm, added circa 1931, and features a carved chimney-piece. A tunnel was cut through the central stack in the 1870s. The house layout incorporates a former lobby entry leading to a hall on the east side, providing access to a parlour in a wing. A kitchen or houseplace on the west side of the stack leads to a divided, longer west crosswing and the brewhouse beyond. A study and staircase are situated in the rear projection. The clasped-purlin roofs of the crosswings have collars supporting a single purlin on each slope. The main roof is wider, featuring two purlins to each slope, the upper clasped by a collar and the lower butt-jointed to the principals. Flat rafters are jointed into the lower purlin. The central chimney is constructed in English bond.