Major Farmhouse

This is a vernacular farmhouse, dating back to the 17th century, with later additions from the 18th century. It retains a lobby-entry plan, a traditional design for farmhouses.

The underlying structure is a timber frame, with red brick used for chimneys and the exterior wall of the eastern extension. The roofs are covered in glazed pantiles.

The original core of the house is a rectangular range facing west, to which a two-storey south extension with a hipped roof and an east extension have been added. The original 17th-century range has two main floors and an attic within a steeply pitched roof, which extends as a cat-slide to the east ground floor extension. The south extension is set perpendicular to these elements.

The west-facing principal elevation shows the long wall of the original 17th-century house projecting slightly beyond the south extension. The walls of both parts are rendered. The main entrance, centrally positioned on the ground floor, has a segmental fanlight above a late-19th-century six-panelled door, flanked by timber-framed windows, with matching windows on the first floor. A chimney stack rises through the roof ridge at the level of the entrance. The west elevation of the south extension has a single window on each floor.

The north elevation displays the gable of the 17th-century block and the end of the east extension, with windows at ground and attic level. Areas where the render has been lost reveal long vertical timbers of the original 17th-century timber frame.

The east elevation shows the cat-slide roofline connecting the extension to the 17th-century range; a later infill section connects the east and south extensions. The east extension’s ground floor is brick-built with two windows. The south extension is rendered and has a single window on both ground and first floors.

The south elevation is windowless and rendered, with a single door at the east end of the ground floor. A brick chimney stack rises centrally through the hipped, pantiled roof.

Inside, the principal rooms of the 17th-century core are arranged around the central chimney stack. The ground floor rooms include a substantial brick fireplace with a timber bressumer in the north room, and a blocked fireplace (now containing a gas heater) with a classical, late-19th-century wooden surround in the south room. A late-18th or early-19th century hob grate is located on the ground floor of the southern extension.

The house has two straight staircases from ground to first floor and a winder staircase from the first floor to the attic. The northern staircase is steep and ladder-like. Other historical features include plank and batten doors and several 19th-century four-panelled doors.