Oasthouse At Bullfinches Farm

The Oasthouse at Bullfinches Farm

This building complex in Rotherfield began as a mid-19th century cartshed with storage and evolved through successive agricultural uses into an oasthouse. It comprises three main elements: a three-bay rectangular stowage building of the mid-19th century, a late 19th-century lean-to cattleshed to the north, and a circular hopkiln of around 1910.

The stowage building is constructed of brick, except for the upper floor of the south-west front which has a timber-framed structure clad in weatherboarding. The roof is tiled with a wooden cowl and fantail over the kiln.

The rear north-eastern wall of the stowage is built in Flemish garden wall bond, rising from a plinth of two or three courses of stone rubble incorporating bricks salvaged from an earlier building on the site. This wall retains the shadow of a demolished lean-to cattle shed and contains a formerly functional opening (probably for draught) in the stonework, now blocked. The side walls are also Flemish bond brickwork. The south-west elevation shows the earlier history of the building: the upper floor, with timber framing and weatherboarding, features one early 20th-century casement window, a fixed casement and a cart door. The formerly open ground floor was later underbuilt in 20th-century stretcher bond brickwork with two casement windows and wooden double doors which are ledged, braced and hung on strap hinges. A brick lean-to is attached to the north. The circular hopkiln attached to the south-west is built in Flemish garden wall bond with a dogtooth cornice, tiled roof and wooden cowl with fantail.

Internally, the stowage's ground floor contains 20th-century brick piers and a circular aperture in the ceiling. A fixed wooden staircase is present, and the opening to the kiln was subsequently blocked. The upper floor has a roof structure of single clasped purlins and collar construction with rafters and a ridgepiece. Two walls retain stencilled annual numbers recording hop pockets processed between 1927 and 2000. The double doors to the kiln survive, and the kiln retains its wooden drying racks.

The building occupies the site of an earlier structure shown on the 1842 Tithe Map, and the rear wall may incorporate stone footings from this predecessor. The structure evolved from an open-fronted cart shed with a storage lift above for crops or grain. By 1897, two lean-tos had been added as cowsheds. The circular kiln was added around 1910. The rear cattleshed was subsequently demolished. The building ceased functioning as an oasthouse in 2000, marked by the final annual hop-pocket numbers recorded on the upper interior walls.

The oasthouse demonstrates the adaptation of local agricultural buildings through the 19th and 20th centuries, reflecting the decline of the corn market and the shift to cattle rearing before its final conversion for hop-drying. It is a comparatively rare surviving example of an oasthouse in Sussex and an increasingly scarce example of an unconverted oasthouse.