The Vicarage

The Vicarage is a complex house with construction dating to the late 15th century, the early to mid-16th century, the 17th century, the early 18th century, and 1870. It was considerably reduced in size around 1960 with the demolition of rear additions. The house comprises a main hall range at the front, a rear range parallel to it, a cross-wing to the left, and a smaller wing to the right, set at right angles behind the front range.

The house is timber framed, with most of the front having 16th-century style imitation studwork and herringbone brick nogging added in 1870. A small section is plastered with a coved eaves cornice. The roofs are covered with plain tiles. The house is two stories high, with an attic in the cross-wing. Casement windows are present. There are two ground floor bay windows with plaintiled roofs, and a projecting first floor window on brackets, all dating to 1870. A central gabled porch, dated 1870 and bearing the initials of Edward Paget, the vicar at the time, is situated at the front, with a partly-glazed studded door and carved spandrels above the open entrance. The gable end of the cross-wing retains some late 15th-century work, restored in 1870 to match the remainder of the front, featuring a jettied first floor supported by original fleuron-enriched brackets and carved buttress shafts, and an overhanging gable on plain brackets. Original close studding is visible, with some applied moulded joists added during the 1870 restoration. A heavy ridge stack is located at the junction of the cross-wing and hall range, while another stack, potentially from the early 17th century, is against the right gable end of the hall range. Internally, most of the timber-framed structure is concealed, although some original studding is visible in a first-floor room within the hall range. A ground floor room in the cross-wing features complete early 18th-century raised and fielded panelling, along with a matching six-panel door. Several other early 18th-century two-panel doors are also present. A rear staircase from the early 19th century has stick balusters and carved tread-ends. There is much simple detail of the early to mid-19th century throughout the house.

The roof over the hall range has queen posts and king posts, with the latter rising mainly from the tie beams and supporting a ridge piece, featuring two-way bracing. One end of the roof towards the cross-wing has an open truss over a first-floor chamber, where the king post is chamfered and carried on the collar, with shallow-curved solid braces meeting at the centre, indicating a raised-aisle form. Two intermediate trusses have shorter arched braces to the collars and no king post. This early to mid-16th-century work likely replaced an earlier hall range and may have been contemporary with the existing cross-wing. The cross-wing has an original side-purlin roof with ashlar pieces to the principal trusses. The rear range, later than the front, has been re-roofed at a shallower pitch, with some sooted rafters and others formed from halved molded joists from a jettied range. The property is surrounded by substantial remains of a medieval moat.