Hammonds

Hammonds is a house, formerly a farmhouse, that dates from the mid 15th century with alterations from the mid 16th and 17th centuries. It is a three-cell open hall house with one and a half storeys and attics. The building is timber-framed and rendered, topped with a thatched roof featuring eyebrow casement dormers and axial chimneys made of red brick. The windows are mainly 20th-century casements with leaded lights, alongside a 15th-century eight-light diamond-mullioned window in the hall, and mid 16th-century moulded mullioned windows in the right-hand parlour and the chamber above.

The entrance features a 15th-century four-centred arched doorway with an oak plank door, and there is a 20th-century plaintiled gabled canopy on brackets. Inside, there is a two-bay smoke-blackened open hall with exceptional timber scantlings and a crown-post roof. The open truss includes a cambered tie-beam, unchamfered arch-braces, and a square crown post with moulded capital and base, supported by four arch-braces. The two-storey service and solar ends were originally half-hipped and feature massive lodged first-floor joists. In the cross-passage, there are two arched doorways leading into service rooms and evidence of an adjacent staircase doorway. The right-hand parlour block, which has an internal chimney, was added in the mid 16th century, during which time a first floor was inserted into the hall and an open fireplace was constructed, backing onto the cross-passage. A further bay was added to the left-hand end in the late 17th or early 18th century, reusing materials from an older building.