Grove Farmhouse

Grove Farmhouse

A farmhouse of late 16th or early 17th-century date, extended and refaced in the mid-19th century with 20th-century additions. The building is timber-framed, mostly rendered and painted, but with a south-east façade of local gault brick (Woolpit Whites). The windows are uPVC/aluminium. The south-east slope of the roof is covered in clay tiles, while those to the north-west are concrete.

The house is a four-bay structure of two stories with attics, with a one-and-a-half storey addition to the north-east gable end and a small single-storey lean-to extension to the north-west elevation. It follows a lobby entry plan, with a porch in the main elevation to the second bay from the south-west opening onto the central stack.

A brick chimney emerges through the ridge of the steeply pitched roof, which has been extended slightly over the 19th-century brick façade. Immediately below the eaves are bricks laid to form a dentilled cornice, a pattern repeated in the ground-floor windows of this elevation below the moulded wooden lintels. The fenestration is regular, with a central dormer window and four first-floor sash windows above four ground-floor openings; two of these are windows, one is a replacement French window, and the fourth is the main entrance. The south-west gable end has two modern windows, one to the attic, and patio doors. The windows to the north-west are irregularly spaced and smaller, while those to the north-east addition originally had segmental arches.

The ground floor is divided into three main spaces, with part of the central space taken for the staircase and entrance hall, which is now open to the modern lean-to extension. All three spaces contain central axial stop-chamfered beams supporting joists. Jowled posts support transverse beams, and regularly spaced studs are visible in the external walls of the central and south-west rooms (except for the rebuilt south-west gable end wall); some studs are replacements. The south-west living room contains a large rebuilt brick fireplace with a bressumer constructed from reclaimed timber, while the fireplace in the central dining room is of plain modern brick construction.

The wall studs of a section of the north-east external wall have been removed to incorporate the new lean-to addition into the original house. All first-floor studs remain, but with the upper half between the studs open to form a balcony along this length of the landing. The first floor also contains three main spaces, two of which have been subdivided to form bathrooms. The wall plate is supported on jowled posts, originally braced to tie beams. The mullions of an early window are preserved in the north-west wall of the south-east room.

The attics are lined with plasterboard. In the storage space to either side, original rafters (supplemented by newer additions) and purlins are visible.

Grove Farmhouse is an early 17th-century house re-fronted and extended in the 19th and 20th centuries. Ordnance Survey maps of 1884 and 1927 show that the main body of the house was then the same width as it is now, with a porch of the same dimensions as the present porch, suggesting the new front elevation was probably added in about the mid-19th century. The one-and-a-half storey extension to the north-east is also present on the 1884 map, which also shows an extension to the south half of the north-west elevation. This was enlarged in the 20th century and was the predecessor to the present but smaller late 20th-century lean-to, built when the house was renovated in 1987. The south-west wall was also rebuilt following its collapse during this work. Other work undertaken at this time included the replacement of the existing Crittall casements with modern sash windows and some re-ordering of the interior plan. The external door in the lean-to is now the main entrance to the house; the porch and lobby to the south-east of the central stack form a small office accessible from the dining room to the north-west.

Grove Farmhouse is designated at Grade II as a late 16th or early 17th-century vernacular building of special architectural and historical interest. It is a substantially intact timber-frame building that retains a significant proportion of its original fabric and preserves its essential lobby-entrance plan form. The building forms part of a landscape of dispersed farmsteads and has group value with three other listed late 16th or early 17th-century farmhouses.