Home Farmhouse , Garden Cottage, Walled Gardens And Stable Range

Home Farmhouse, Garden Cottage, Walled Gardens and Stable Range

A mid-19th-century farm and garden complex, probably designed by George Devey for Sir Walter James, located at Bettershanger. The entire complex is constructed of brown brick with diapered brickwork detailing on the houses, which have plain tiled roofs.

The main houses are two storeys tall. The coachman's house comprises two bays with a central entrance, featuring a plank door with a Caernarvon arch. Below this are four-light mullion and transom windows, with three-light windows on the storey above. Paved diagonal stacks project from the rear wall, with a projecting two-storey wing. The garden house has three bays and a central two-storey porch set into a sloped gable. It features small paved casement windows with half domes above and gabled stacks. The rear elevation displays three gabled dormers with flanking outshuts containing boarded doors and cross windows at ground floor level; this rear elevation now serves as the present entrance front.

The walled gardens comprise two great courts, each approximately 100 metres by 25 metres, with walls about 8 feet high built of brown brick. These feature four-centred arched openings and an elaborate gateway with a swan neck pediment towards the house. The south-eastern stretch of wall forms part of the decorative approach around Bettershanger Church (St Mary). This section is distinguished by a range of pilaster-strip buttresses raised above the wall to form piers for an iron railing, with four-centred arched doorways and a large buttress supporting a sundial dated 1895, inscribed in Latin and bearing astronomical signs. Partly ruined glasshouses stand within the walled gardens.

The stable range is single-storey with a slated roof and mullioned windows. It features a large entrance porch with a segmental head and ball finial side piers, with a large horse-shoe shaped entry. The left end bay has a parapet roof set at a higher level than the main range, with corner pilasters raised above the parapet.