199, Preston Road

A detached mid-18th century farmhouse, now in office use, incorporating earlier structural elements and later 19th and 20th century alterations.

Construction and Materials

The building is faced with squared, knapped flint with brick dressings to the quoins, window and door openings, and a square-topped plinth. The principal façade above plinth level displays particularly fine craftsmanship: the flints have been carefully selected, knapped square, and laid with tight joints to create a regularly coursed, black, shiny surface. The brick quoins are formed using alternating blocks one-and-a-half bricks and one brick wide, each block being three brick courses deep.

The southern façade is not visible. While most of the north elevation was rebuilt, sufficient original facing fabric survives to show irregular and mostly knapped flint nodules bedded in lime mortar. The original rear wall, now an internal wall, is of flint-faced masonry. The 19th century wall is faced in coursed flint with brick bands at every fourth course. The front roof is covered with slate whilst the rear is tiled.

Form and Exterior Features

The building is a two-storey, two-range, five-bay farmhouse. All roofs are pitched, with the valley between them stopped off by tall parapet walls. The mid-18th century roof is of traditional standard assembly, supported by wallplates and tiebeams. It is simply built using paired rafters linked by morticed-in collars, without a ridgeboard. Running the length of the roof, halved over the top face of the collars, is a central plate used to help prevent racking during construction. Nailed in near the feet of the rafters are ashlar pieces which support low lathe-and-plaster side walls of the garret rooms. At least two of these ashlar pieces are reused early 16th century moulded mullions. A few of the rafters are also reused, including medieval rafters halved for collars. However, the majority of the rafters and collars were newly cut for the roof and incorporate carpenters' assembly marks, starting from the southern end and pairing the joints between collar and rafter.

The 19th century roof over the rear range is of stilted standard pitched form. On the eastern side the plate is located at the head of the wall, allowing the garret rooms to be lit by windows looking into the hidden central valley. In contrast, the rear (western) slope extends down to garret floor level and is constructed in stages, with the common rafters interrupted at a high-level wallplate at mid-height.

The central front entrance is deeply recessed within a semi-circular-headed opening with a projecting keystone, flanked by simple timber pilasters and a modern porch. The six-panel front door survives, capped by a simple fanlight. Flanking the opening are two pairs of double-hung sash windows with slender glazing bars, though the pair of frames lighting the northern chamber have been replaced without glazing bars. This design is repeated above, with a fifth window over the main entrance. The ground floor windows have flat arches under brick panels; the first floor windows are set just below the eaves.

Within the northern gable, adjacent to the rebuilt chimney, survives a horizontal sliding sash lighting the northern attic room. A similar opening, now blocked, marks the site of the window which lit the southern garret.

Interior Arrangement and Features

The walls within the lesser rooms of the house appear to have been plain plastered, but those within the ground and first floor southern rooms are lined with original panelling. The panelling is of simple design with small panels below the moulded dado rails and taller panels above. The panels within the first-floor chamber are plain, with the upper panels extending to the ceiling cornice. Within the ground-floor room the panels are edged with a quadrant mould, with those above the dado divided into two tiers by a high-level rail. The windows within both rooms incorporate seats, as do those within the northern chamber. Set in the splayed reveals of all the window openings are folding panelled shutters, now fixed in their folded position.

Within the other ground floor rooms, dado rails and moulded skirting survive. The dado rail within the northern room has a fluted design and the heavily-moulded architraves around the doors and window openings form bold decorative statements. The front door is flanked by fluted pilasters and there is a similar design of fluting to the openings which cross the ground-floor entrance passage and first-floor landing on the line of the old rear wall. These latter openings have segmentally-arched heads.

The principal 19th century feature of the house is the staircase, with turned newel posts, slender stick balusters and a moulded string, all under a mahogany handrail. Two 19th century fireplaces also remain: one in the rear parlour, the other in the rear parlour chamber. Beneath the entry and southern room is a cellar which now incorporates a concrete ceiling forming a new ground-floor slab, and its walls are lined in modern brickwork.

Subsidiary Structures

A coach house, built between 1875 and 1896, is located within the rear yard of the building. Incorporated into the western wall is an earlier flint boundary, but otherwise the building has brick walls and a gabled softwood modified kingpost construction roof formed by nailed-on planks. The roof covering is slate and has pierced, crested ridge tiles to the apex.

Historical Development

Cartographic evidence shows that a house has stood on this site since at least 1617, although the present house is of mid-18th century date. It is possible that a rebuilt chimney, several reused medieval rafters and early 16th century window mullions could originate from the earlier structure. The initial phase of the present house is restricted to the street (eastern) five-bay range. There is structural evidence for a destroyed stair turret to the rear of the entrance hall, which gave access to two rooms within the roof. This may have been flanked by service rooms located within a rear lean-to outshut, also now destroyed. The ground-floor layout was repeated on the first floor, except that there was a shared closet above the entrance area.

Between 1800 and 1850 a rear range was built parallel to the original house, providing two extra rooms on all floors, including within the roof area. The 1838 tithe schedule lists the building as a house, but soon after that date it became a brewery. Cartographic evidence indicates that by 1875 a small, narrow range of attached outhouses had been built projecting from the southwestern corner of the building, and by this date a rear porch had also been constructed. The structural evidence indicates that both represent additions, rather than being part of the early 19th century work.

Following the early 19th century modifications alterations have been minimal, although a late 20th century brick-built, flat-roofed toilet block has been added to the rear of the early 19th century range.