Wattisfield Hall, Garden Walls And Gate Piers

Wattisfield Hall is a farmhouse, formerly manorial, built in the early 17th century. It is timber-framed and rendered with plain tile roofs, comprising two storeys and attics arranged in a single long range with central entry and gable-end chimney-stacks.

The chimneys are a striking feature. Both gable-end stacks are constructed in red brick set externally: the left stack has five shafts, the right has three. Two similar stacks on the rear wall each have two shafts. All four stacks display the same style, with high octagonal shafts featuring moulded bases and starred caps—clearly intended as a display feature, though they serve the house's 12 hearths.

The front elevation shows five windows to the upper floor and four to the lower, all tripartite early 19th-century sashes with vertical glazing-bars only. A two-storey porch containing the entry is jettied on all three sides, with the upper parts of the two corner posts projecting from the plaster. The porch has four-light side openings, each fitted with heavily turned 17th-century balusters, a rectangular doorway, and a flat-topped roof with hipped sides. The entrance door within is panelled with six raised fielded panels.

On the rear wall, the chimney-stacks are positioned between three short gabled wings with projecting tie-beams, all rendered. The central wing contains an original six-light oriel window on the upper floor with ovolo-moulded mullions and transom, now blocked by the insertion of a stair against it. At the left end of the front is a later 17th-century extension of similar height and matching materials, with a gabled rear of the same size as the rear wings; this section is divided from the main house and unoccupied. Attached to its south-east corner is a small single-storey 18th-century outhouse in red brick laid in English Bond, with a tumbled gable incorporating an end chimney-stack and pantiled roof.

The interior has little exposed timbering, with five wide bays to the main house and ovolo-moulding to some main beams. A fine series of fireplaces runs throughout. The rear stacks each contain hearths on ground and first floor, all with shallow, almost flat brick arches and chamfered surrounds. Both gable-end stacks have fireplaces to each floor and to the attic: on the left ground floor room, the hearth is immense, possibly originally a kitchen, with the shallow arched opening repaired in 20th-century render. The right end of the house features the most ornate fireplaces, with square surrounds and inset four-centred depressed arches, all ovolo-moulded. The house appears to have had more than one early 17th-century phase, though its present internal layout reflects 19th-century changes, making the earlier form difficult to determine. The present stair in the central rear wing is clearly an insertion, incorporating two sections of resited Jacobean balusters and Edwardian newel-posts. Part of an older newel stair remains serving the attic storey.

The roof is lighted by windows in the apex of the rear wing gables and comprises 11 irregularly-spaced bays with two rows of unstepped butt purlins.

The house is thought to have been built for John Osborne, who purchased the manor from Sir Robert Jermyn in 1592 and died in 1619. Ownership of the manor and site is well-documented.

Surrounding the property are seventeenth-century red brick walls laid in English Bond, topped by a course of inward-sloping coping bricks with a roll-moulding above. These walls surround the front garden on all three sides and join to each end of the house. Widely-spaced square gate piers, rusticated in bands with shallow conical tops, stand on the street frontage in line with the porch.