Allbrook Farmhouse

Allbrook Farmhouse is a timber-framed former farmhouse, later converted to a house, built in 1659. The building sits on Allbrook Hill in Eastleigh and retains significant 17th-century fabric alongside later alterations and additions.

The house follows a three-bay lobby entrance plan with a slightly longer east end and service rooms in a north outshot. The south elevation was refronted and refenestrated in the early to mid-19th century and given a two-storey brick porch with a gabled projection by 1892. The 1930s refurbishment included insertion of brick herringbone nogging and some replacement windows to the outshot.

The south or entrance front is faced in Flemish bond brickwork with mid-19th-century cast iron casements featuring a mixture of diamond and hexagonal-shaped panes. The two-storey gabled porch projects from ground level, built of brick with a two-centred arched entrance hung with alternate courses of curved and pointed tiles above. The original carved oak front door, dated 1659, was stolen in the late 20th century. The east and west sides display exposed box-frame timber framing with midrail and diagonal tension braces, herringbone brick nogging on a brick plinth, and original window openings. The gables have plain wooden bargeboards and tile-hung tops of late 19th-century date. The north side features a catslide roof with a timber-framed gabled staircase dormer rising from the centre with 19th-century stretcher bond brick nogging. The north outshot wall is of 19th-century brickwork with some 1930s metal-framed Crittall windows. The roof is of 20th-century tiles with a nearly central brick chimneystack.

The interior ground floor contains a lobby with two ledged oak doors leading to two large rooms. The eastern room has an original wooden bressumer fireplace, though the sides were filled with brick and tiles on edge in the 1930s. The ceiling features a spine beam with ovolo-moulding with quirk and lambs tongue stop and chamfered floor joists with lambs tongue stops, though a 20th-century RSJ was inserted toward the eastern end and the further side has a spine beam with two-inch chamfer and square profile joists. In the 19th century the northern part was partitioned with two ledged doors and two four-panelled doors. The western room has a fireplace with chamfered wooden bressumer, ovolo-moulded spine beam with lambs tongue stops and matching ceiling beams. A 19th-century straight flight staircase with stick balusters and square newel post was inserted north of the chimneystack, though a late 18th or early 19th-century wooden winder staircase survives in the north-west corner from ground to first floor. In the outshot the entire north timber-framed wall of the main house is visible with stretcher bond infill.

The first floor comprises three bedrooms and a small room over the north porch. The western room has a chamfered spine beam with run-out stops and matching floor joists. Between this and the central room is a plank and muntin panelled partition. Between this room and the eastern room is a partition wall with midrail and diagonal braces with a later 19th-century cast iron firegrate to the northern end and a wooden cupboard with butterfly hinges adjoining to the left. This room has an ovolo-moulded beam with lambs tongue stop, square section floor joists and original floorboards. The western room has a small fireplace with wooden bressumer with narrow spandrels, a spine beam with ovolo-moulding, lambs tongue stops and floor joists and two ledged doors. The upper part of the chimneystack is visible in a cupboard to the north. Timber framing is visible in the side and rear or south wall with upright posts and window openings. A stair turret in the centre of the south wall contains a late 18th or early 19th-century half-winder staircase leading from first floor to attic with an octagonal central post and plank balustrade at the top. The attic, lit through the gable ends, has a roof structure of rafters without ridgepiece and purlins supported by diagonal tension braces.

The date of construction, 1659, is inferred from the date carved on the oak front door, and this is supported by the plan form and pattern of timber framing. Between 1665 and 1670 the property was occupied by Charles and Mary Beale and their family. Charles Beale had succeeded to his father's post as Deputy Clerk of the Patents Office in 1660. His wife Mary was a portrait painter of growing reputation, already mentioned alongside three other female painters in Sir William Sanderson's "Graphice, or, The most Excellent Art of Painting" of 1658. The move from London to Eastleigh was prompted by insecurity in Charles's career and also the plague in London. During their few years in Eastleigh, Mary Beale produced her self-portrait of 1665 and wrote the "Essay on Friendship", which proposed the radical idea for the time of equality between men and women in friendship and marriage. Izaac Walton, author of "The Compleat Angler", visited the Beales at Allbrook Farmhouse. When they returned to London, Mary established herself as a professional artist with a studio in their rented house in Pall Mall, where she lived until her death in 1699. Allbrook Farmhouse is shown with its present footprint, including the added 19th-century porch, on the first Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1892. In the early 1980s the property was bought by Eldridge Pope, the brewers, for conversion into a public house but remained empty for sixteen years.