Bell Farm House

Farmhouse. Circa 1500. The building is timber framed with plaster infilling and a plain tile roof. It is a Wealden house, originally comprising an open hall of two unequal bays with a storeyed bay to either end.

The house has two storeys. The close-studded timbering is visible except on the ground floor of the right bay of the hall and the right end bay, which show broadly spaced studding. The right and left end bays are jettied, with moulded bressumers. These jetties and the moulding continue around the side elevations on moulded dragon posts. A moulded fillet runs across the front, along the left side, and formerly along the right, halfway up the first floor. Close-studded coving sits above a flying wall-plate, springing from the fillet. A cross-passage is marked by a bracket to the coving towards the right end of the hall. The roof is hipped, with a gablet to the left. A multiple brick ridge stack with a fillet is located in front of the roof, off-centre to the right, and a small projecting stack is at the left end. The window arrangement is irregular, with a small four-light ovolo-moulded mullioned casement with leaded panes in each outer bay. A two-storey canted bay, likely the original hall window, extends through the coving almost to the eaves in the larger left-hand bay of the hall. The ground floor of this bay has a six-light early 20th-century casement, while the first floor has been filled in and painted to resemble close studding. A hollow-chamfered four-centred arched door head with carved spandrels is located at the right end of the hall, with a moulded brattished bressumer above. The door is ribbed and likely original. An original, blocked door opening on the first floor to the rear of the left side elevation may have been for a garderobe. A weatherboarded lean-to is attached to the right end.

The interior features moulded and brattished screens and dais beams, two four-centred arched service doors with hollow spandrels and hollow-chamfered jambs, and a plain opening to the ‘service’ end stairs. The ‘service’ stairs are original. There are moulded central truss posts, a tie-beam, and a moulded octagonal central crown-post; other crown-posts are plain. Original smoke-blackened hall wall is visible on the first floor to the right. Internal tension braces and rebated corner posts are also present. An unusual survival is of original vertical stud, lathe and daub wall concealing the coving from inside the hall. The hall floor and stack date to approximately 1600. This is described as an "unusually sumptuous C16 Wealden house, unusually well preserved, i.e. not restored."