Old Hall Farmhouse

SOUTH ELMHAM ST. NICHOLAS TM 38 SW ALL SAINTS & ST. NICHOLAS

4/38 Old Hall Farmhouse -

• II

Farmhouse. C15 core, altered and extended in C16 and C17. 2 storeys; attic to part; 3-cell form. Timber-framed, roughcast render, brick to the ground floor on the left gable wall; clay pantiles. An internal chimney-stack with a very large rebuilt square red brick shaft, band, and corbelled white brick top. Casement windows, mainly 3-light with transomes and all with C20 diamond-leaded panes. 2 C20 doors: one, into a lobby entrance, with a rustic timber porch; the other, in a cross-entry position, in a recessed brick porch. The interior falls into 3 sections, the middle 1½ bays being the earliest, with the core of an open hall, from which the roof structure and the tie-beam of the open truss were removed later, and the walls heightened. The original timbers are still smoke-blackened, but little evidence of the form of the hall survives. A chimney-stack was inserted at its upper end in the mid C16, and a new parlour block added. This has a fine exposed ceiling on the ground floor, with double roll-mouldings to the main beam and joists and run-off stops. Close-studding with cranked braces to the upper rooms, and an original upper ceiling. On the rear wall, a blocked 4-light window with unusual wide roll- moulded mullions. Between the parlour and hall, a square- headed ovolo- moulded doorway with formalised roses at the base of the jambs, and a similar doorway, much weathered, at the rear of the cross-entry. The service area has been enlarged and raised in the C17, but still has fragments of mediaeval work. The remains of mullioned windows with wide sills, and a further doorway, now reset, with 4-centred arched head and carved spandrels, all from the rear wall, suggest that the house formerly faced the other way. A long 1½ storey lean-to now runs along the back. The house contains a number of good moulded C16 plank doors, all different, with original hinges.

Listing NGR: TM3155782967