Eel Farmhouse

Eel Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the mid-15th century, with alterations made in the 17th and 19th centuries. It features a plastered and colourwashed timber frame and a pantiled roof, following a hall house plan that was floored in the early 17th century.

The north front has two storeys and a three-window range, including one 2-light and one 3-light late 18th-century casement window on the ground floor, along with a mid-20th-century 3-light metal window to the left. There is one 4-paned window on the first floor and a raking dormer fitted with a 2-light casement. A blocked doorway is located to the right of centre, and there is a rendered ridge stack to the left of centre. The south front features five 2- or 3-light casements, as well as a 20th-century 2-light casement in a raking dormer. The east gable end shows marks of a blocked attic window, while the west gable end has a single-storey late 19th-century gabled extension that includes one 2-light casement, a plank door, and a brick stack.

Inside, the timber frame consists of very heavy scantling. The east ground-floor room has an early 17th-century bridging beam with sunk quadrant mouldings and jewelled tongue stops. There is a 20th-century fire insert in a 17th-century stack, which has a bread oven to its left. On either side of the chimney breast, there is a pair of early 19th-century 2-panelled doors. The south stack lobby features an early 17th-century winder staircase, and the room immediately to the west contains chamfered arched braces supporting the principal hall truss. This area leads to a hall screens passage with two blocked arched openings divided by a heavy principal stud, and the timber arches are chamfered. A chamfered bridging beam extends from the stud to the stack.

On the first floor, the east room has a tie beam supported by straight braces and a blocked gable-end window. It also features a fine 17th-century stone fireplace bressumer with a 4-centred opening, hollow and ogee mouldings, and painted spandrels in red ochre. The room and the floored hall to the west have 17th-century floorboards. The principal hall truss consists of a tie beam on arched braces, with queen posts rising to a smoke-blackened collar. There are remains of a second such truss to the east, with queen posts that have chamfered corners ending in broach stops. The remainder of the roof structure has been renewed. The west room does not have access to the first floor.