The Rookery

This is a former farmhouse, dating to around 1600 with later additions. It is timber-framed and rendered, with white brick facing to part, and has plaintiled roofs. The building has an irregular form and two internal chimney-stacks. One chimney-stack has four barrel shafts, moulded at the cap and base, set on a long, narrow base decorated with two courses of diaper-patterned tiles.

Part of the south front has a mid-19th century white brick facing, featuring a central gable with a raised course of bricks along its slopes, a spike finial with a ball, and corbels, projecting slightly forward of two flanking crenellated sections. The gable has paired 12-pane sash windows within heavy mock-stone surrounds on both the ground and first floors, with a single 12-pane sash in the apex. The crenellated sides each have a four-panelled door and fanlight with radiating glazing-bars in a semi-circular-headed surround, and a 12-pane sash window above. The remainder of the south front has 9-pane sashes to each floor. A small, 17th-century projecting wing is located on the west side, featuring fluted bargeboards, a spike finial to the gable, a projecting tie-beam with Jacobean carving, and a two-light casement window with a single bar to each floor.

The oldest part of the building is a four-bay, three-cell range aligned north-south, with an internal chimney-stack. In the ground floor room to the south of the stack, behind the brick gable, is an ovolo-moulded main beam with lamb's tongue stops. To the north of the stack, the main beams are plain and worn. The construction incorporates close-studding with some 18th-century brick infill, and Tudor brick on the north side of the stack. The upper floor has joists on edge. The roof, in seven bays unrelated to the wall bays, includes two rows of unstepped butt purlins and very large principal rafters. The east-west range is not all of one date, and much of the structure is concealed. The four eastern bays have exposed walling on the ground floor, showing indications that the ceilings were raised in the 18th century. The roof here features one row of unstepped butt purlins, one row of clasped purlins, and the remains of windbraces.