Appletona, farmhouse and cottage

Appletona is a 16th-century farmhouse with an attached cottage, substantially altered following a fire in 1969.

The house is constructed of brick walling with pine structural timbers, while the cottage is flint-walled. Both are roofed in Norfolk reed thatch. The building plan preserves the parlour and part of the hall from an earlier three-celled layout, with the house and cottage now arranged in an L-shaped configuration.

The principal south-facing elevation is five bays wide and mostly two-storeyed. Four bays are laid in diaper pattern brickwork, with four tie bars visible in the historic brick; the easternmost bay has been rebuilt in 20th-century brick in English bond. A single bay features slim casements indicating the historic position of a stair compartment. The windows throughout are regular 20th-century timber-framed casements. The west elevation shows many areas of repair and alteration, including a blocked first-floor window, though a small possibly original ground-floor window survives. The gable at roof level is laid in Flemish bond with a tumbled brick parapet, suggesting an early 18th-century date. The north elevation is walled in brick and flint rubble with even courses of brickwork above first-floor window cill height.

A two-storey link adjoins the eastern bay and connects to the cottage, beyond which extends a late 20th-century single-storey rendered extension. The cottage has a single chimney stack at the north end and irregularly spaced windows, with partly-rendered flint rubble walling and reconstructed brick quoins on the west elevation. A single-storey flint outshot projects on the east elevation between the cottage corner and the link. Following the 1969 fire, most brickwork was rebuilt, though a small area of historic brickwork remains at the house base. A well marked on historic Ordnance Survey maps survives beneath a concrete pump base on the north side, measuring 1.5 metres in diameter with a depth of 17 metres.

Interior spaces of interest occupy the western parts of the house and ground floor of the cottage. The parlour contains structural beams of early pine with chamfers and stops, and a large fireplace with a blocked bread oven. The hall features a panelled wall formed of moulded elm posts and boards without rails, possibly a re-sited screen. At first floor, the western rooms retain original wide floorboards bearing carpenters' marks. The room above the parlour has a substantial brick fireplace, and on the south side of the principal chimney stack the tread of an earlier staircase survives. In the room above the hall, the words 'MINDE YE HEADE' are carved into one timber, probably a 20th-century addition. The cottage ground floor consists of one large open space with a fireplace at the north end, featuring especially large, roughly hewn beams with chamfers and stops. Throughout the entire building, doors are arts and crafts style plank and batten doors of oak.