Rookery Farmhouse

Rookery Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from around 1530, with alterations made in the early 17th century and early 19th century. The building has two storeys and attics, featuring a three-cell cross-entry plan. It is primarily timber-framed and plastered, although the ground storey walls and the left gable have been rebuilt in 19th-century red brick. The roof is covered with concrete tiles, having originally been thatched.

The farmhouse includes an axial chimney made of orange and buff brick from the 16th or early 17th century, and a 19th-century gable chimney of red brick on the left side. The first storey has mid-20th-century two-light casement windows, while the ground storey features two 18th-century three-light casements with transoms, one of which was replaced in the late 20th century. The entrance doors are boarded and date from the 20th century.

Inside, the hall showcases high-quality features from around 1530, including ogee-and-scotia moulded joists and a massive binding beam with deep multiple mouldings. There is a fine but incomplete 16th-century plank-and-muntin cross-passage screen that was slightly moved to the right in the late 18th century, along with a cupboard featuring fluted pilasters and carved shelves. The original wide hall fireplace has a cambered lintel and sunk panels made of red brick.

One of the service room doorways has a four-centred arched head, while the other has been restored. The service cell to the left contains heavy unchamfered joists. The first-floor layout is unusual, with a large two-bay chamber above the service cell that extends partly over the hall, featuring a good archbraced cambered and chamfered tiebeam and very closely spaced studding. The parlour has an original lintelled fireplace, but this cell was rebuilt in the 17th century, incorporating reused medieval floor joists and a heavily moulded bridging beam from the 15th or early 16th century. The chamber above the parlour has 18th-century stencilled wall decoration in black vertical lines with abstract patterns of intertwined foliage. The roof is a clasped-purlin type from the early 17th century, with reduced principal rafters.