Fairfax House

Fairfax House is a house dating from around 1600. It has a two-cell lobby-entrance plan, arranged over two storeys and with attics. The house is timber-framed and has a pebble-dashed exterior. The first-floor gable projects to the left. It has a plain-tiled roof with an original chimney constructed of narrow red bricks, featuring a rectangular base with a moulded brick cornice and a shaft of narrow gault bricks. 20th-century small-pane sash windows are in place, along with a gabled entrance porch containing a panelled door. The timber framing is of good quality and unusually complete and well-exposed. Interior features include chamfered ceiling joists, with those in the attic floor being on edge. The framing exhibits close-studding with several blocked mullioned windows; ovolo-moulded and originally glazed windows are found in the parlour and the chamber above, while diamond-mullioned and unglazed windows are in the hall. Original, unaltered open fireplaces remain, including one in the hall with a cambered lintel and one in the parlour with an elliptical head. A single-storey rear service wing may represent an earlier structure. The house was formerly known as Spalding Hall. The Reverend John Fairfax, Rector of Needham Market until 1662 when he was ejected for his religious convictions, lived here after a period of imprisonment, and died in 1700.