Bower Farmhouse

House. Dating to circa 1500, it was altered in the 16th to 18th centuries. The house is timber framed and initially clad with red and blue brick, with the front elevation's first floor rendered and tile hung. Later extensions were built with red and blue brick, partly in English bond, and with tile-hung outshots. The roof is tiled. Originally a hall house with a cross wing passage, the building has a hipped roof with gablets, standing on a ragstone plinth. A rear centre stack has four truncated octagonal shafts; the original six tall ornamented chimney shafts were removed in the mid-20th century. A two-part sash window with central vertical glazing bars occupies the first floor, and sash and two metal casement windows are on the ground floor, with a hipped porch to the centre right, featuring a glazed outer and half-glazed inner door. A left return wall is of English bond brick with a truncated external stack. The rear has been extended with a hipped wing and catslide outshots. Evidence of close-studded exterior walls survives within. The end right bay was rebuilt in the 18th century, incorporating reused timber. A brattished and coved dais beam, a low and wide four-centred arched door with hollow chamfered jambs, and a preserved moulded bargeboard inside an end room are noteworthy features. Rear rooms, a 17th-century extension, display chamfered beams, wave-moulded ship-lap doors, and a kitchen inglenook containing a round bread oven projecting into the room. The main chamber/hall has an ovolo-moulded cross-beamed ceiling with tongue stops, with nine-panelled, studded doors in stop-chamfered and moulded doorways (all 16th/17th-century work). A staircase with moulded rails and poppy-head finials to the newels—the balusters are plaster— rises within. Upper rooms have fine multi-panelled doors in moulded surrounds and a coved chimney overmantel. Close-studded rear walls display a mid-rail lean-to and clasped purlin roofs to the rear range. The main range has a crown-post roof; the hall features half-octagonal end posts and a full central post approximately 5 feet high, smoke-blackened, resting on massive hollow chamfered knee-braced tie beams.