Elham Manor

House. It was built in the early 16th century, or possibly earlier, with alterations in the late 18th century. The house is timber-framed with rendered infilling. The first floor of the left hall bay and the left gable end are clad with darkened weatherboarding. Bands of plain and fishscale tiles cover the first floor of the left side and the rear gable end of a wing. It has a plain tile roof. The building is of Wealden design, with surviving portions of the short left hall bay, two-storeyed left end bays, and the rear left return wing.

It’s situated on a corner site and has two storeys and a cellar. The left side has a plinth or cellar wall made of irregular blocks of galleted ragstone and sandstone on a base of roughly-coursed flints, which increase in depth with the slope of the land to the rear. There is a blocked rectangular cellar light. A continuous jetty with a moulded fascia board and moulded solid-spandrel brackets runs along the two-storeyed left end bays, returning along the left side, and again around the rear gable end of the wing, supported by moulded dragon posts. The front elevation’s ground floor has close-studding, while the first floor of the front elevation and the ground floor of the rear gable end have broadly-spaced studding with tension braces. There is weatherboarded coving under a flying wall-plate. The roof is steeply pitched and hipped to the left. The rear section of the left return has slightly lower eaves and a ridge, with a hipped roof to the rear. A red brick stack is located at the rear of the left end bay, where it joins the wing, featuring an ovolo-moulded cornice and four flues. Another red brick ridge stack is present on the left end of the left hall bay.

The fenestration is irregular, with no windows on the left hall bay, one three-light leaded casement on the first floor of the left storeyed bay, and a canted oriel dormer with a single, scrolled strapwork bracket, a pedimented plain-tiled gable and a two-light casement with side-lights, on the storeyed left end bay. A canted bay window with a painted brick base and two-light leaded windows is located on each storeyed end bay. The left return elevation has three small two-light leaded casements - one on the first floor and two on the ground floor. A broad, studded door occupies most of the ground floor of the left hall bay, with a moulded and enriched 17th-century cornice. A half-glazed door with two fielded panels and a moulded, finely-dentilled wooden cornice is set into the rear gable end of the wing. Another two-storey weatherboarded rear wing extends towards the centre, abutting the right side of the left wing and having a hipped plain tile roof. The interior has not been inspected. A cottage, Manor House Cottage, adjoins on the right and probably replaces the right end of the Wealden.