Church Farm

Church Farm is a late 17th-century timber-framed house with significant later modifications and extensions. The building is constructed of timber-framing with wattle and daub infill, later encased in brick on the front elevation and southern gable, while the northern gable is rendered. The rear features a brick and flint plinth supporting a rendered and painted wall, with later extensions built in brick and partially rendered. A corrugated metal roof covers original thatch, which remains exposed in various places within the roof space. Windows include timber sash windows to the front elevation and later timber casements in the rear extension and gables.

The house follows a lobby-entrance plan with a large central stack and later rear extensions including a timber-framed stair tower. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1882 shows a building of similar plan form, suggesting the extensions date to at least the mid-19th century.

Externally, Church Farm is a four-bay, two-storey house with an elaborate central brick stack surmounted by four individual angle-set chimneys. A protruding gabled porch sits left of centre with a late 18th or early 19th-century four-panelled timber door. Eight over eight timber sash windows under flat brick arches occupy each bay of the first floor, with a horned sash at the north end of the ground floor. Small casement windows are positioned in the north and south gable ends. The southernmost two-storey rear extension retains three variations of timber-framed casement windows set either side of a tall, tapering brick stack that rises as high as the ridge of the main building. This extension is built of red brick with rendered and painted, slightly recessed walls between the brick quoins and stack. A smaller single-storey brick-built extension to the northern end is roofed in red-clay pantiles with a brick stack and a small blocked window in the rear wall.

The interior consists of a basic two-room plan, one either side of the central stack. A small lobby area accessed via the main front entrance provides access to the two main ground-floor rooms. A chamfered and stopped spine beam runs centrally through the building at ground-floor level; that in the northern room has been boxed in, while that in the southern room displays chamfers with lamb's tongue stops. The tiled fire surround in the northern room is of 1920s style, and the central stack remains largely intact despite partial boxing in. The southern end has been extended with a small room and storage area at both ground and first-floor levels, probably dating to when the southern gable was rebuilt in brick and the southern rear extension was added. A small rectangular lobby to the rear of the chimney provides access to the rear two-storey extension and the oak winder stair. Wide oak floor boarding survives throughout the ground floor of the original building except in the front lobby, where clay quarry tiles are laid diagonally. The ground floor of the rear extension features a fireplace serviced by the tall brick chimney. The smaller single-storey extension contains a simple brick fireplace with a copper in the north-west corner. The north-east corner sits at an oblique angle to accommodate a particularly thick wall, the reason for which remains unclear.

The oak winder stair is located in the rear stair tower, where vertical timbers visible behind the wallpaper indicate corner posts of the timber framing.

On the first-floor landing, timber panelling incorporating cupboards is fitted into the side of the central stack. The L-shaped hinges are characteristic of the late 17th century, compatible with the date of the panelling. The rooms either side display bridging beams, most boxed in, though those flanking the central stack show simple chamfers. In the south-east corner of the southern room, a small cupboard contains a blocked leaded-light casement window, presumably originally used to take borrowed light from the front to the back of the building. This window retains a horizontal spring latch characteristic of the late 17th century and sits within the studding of the timber frame. A horizontal timber running at ceiling height along the rear wall of the northern room and the front wall of the southern room provides evidence of wall plates of the timber frame. Further evidence appears in vertical corner posts visible in the rear corners of the stair tower and in the corners of the cupboard above the ground-floor front lobby. Linear patterns beneath wallpaper indicate the survival of studding throughout much of the building, though the timber frame is explicitly evident in the stair tower walls leading to the loft floor, where vertical close studding with diagonal braces remains visible, free of plaster or wallpaper.

Wide timber plank and batten doors with lift latches, many with leaf-shaped ends, and round-headed strap hinges remain in use, particularly in utility areas, at access to the loft stairs and cellar, and between various sections of loft space. These suggest a 17th-century date. Doors in the principal rooms on both ground and first floors are more elaborate raised and fielded four-panelled doors with L-shaped hinges.

Within the steeply pitched roof space, rafters are visible throughout, many with natural twine twisted and tied at regular intervals to anchor the thatch. Between the rafters, the roof is plastered and painted, though reed is exposed at various points where plaster or boarding has moved. The roof space has been ceiled at the height of the collar beam, but purlins remain visible within the southern room. The tapering shaft of the chimney is visible in a small room at the front of the loft. The stair tower roof, at right angles to the principal roof, displays close studding in the gable and in the wall adjacent to the timber winder stair, providing detailed evidence of the building's structure.

The single-roomed basement provides clear evidence of the timber structure standing upon a flint and painted plinth. A chamfered and stopped beam is exposed here, as is a drainage gully running across the width of the room. A metal casement window lights the room from the front, and a blocked ventilation grille is evident in the rear wall, presumably blocked when the single-storey extension was added.

A garden wall attached to the southern end of the house runs along the edge of the lane with a gate leading to the rear and a small hatch opening into an attached outhouse. Attached to the northern gable is a single-storey farm building, possibly stables, forming the western range of a rectangular planned yard. These buildings are constructed of brick and flint with red-clay pantile roofs and are subdivided into stables or have open fronts. These subsidiary features are not of special architectural or historic interest and are not included within the designation.