Cleaves Hall, Cleaves House And Footpath Between Cleaves Hall And Vicarage Road

Cleaves Hall, Cleaves House and footpath between Cleaves Hall and Vicarage Road

A school with schoolmaster's house, now a parish hall and house, founded in 1663 or 1665 by William Cleave, a haberdasher of London. The main building incorporates a 15th or early 16th-century cross-wing.

The main range dates to the mid-17th century and comprises three timber-framed bays, two storeys and attics. The cross-wing to the right is of 15th or early sixteenth-century date with two short timber-framed bays projecting forward slightly, extended to the rear by a further two timber-framed bays and a rear end stack bay, probably forming the schoolmaster's house in the mid-17th century. A further timber-framed bay was added to the rear of the stack bay in the late 17th or 18th century. The cross-wing stands two storeys high. The ground floor is of red brick throughout, with the first floor and part of the ground floor of the wing hung with fish-scale tiles. The first floor of the wing is rendered to the rear. A plain tile roof covers the building. The front two bays of the wing have a ragstone plinth and were formerly jettied to the front and right side.

The roof of the main range is gabled to the left and hipped down to the cross-wing to the right. The cross-wing roof is hipped with a gablet to the front, with lower eaves and ridge. A tall hexagonal louvred wooden bell cupola with a leaded onion dome is positioned towards the left end of the main range. Multiple red and grey brick stacks rise from each end of the main range; that at the right end projects into the front slope of the roof. A ridge stack stands towards the rear of the wing.

Two small gabled dormers with leaded two-light casements light the main range. Fenestration is irregular, with three three-light leaded casements—two broadly-spaced to the main range and one to the front gable end of the wing. A ribbed door is set to the left end of the main range, behind a gabled 19th-century red brick porch rising three steps, with a four-centred arched rubbed brick outer doorway. A half-glazed door to Cleaves House is recessed behind a 20th-century four-centred arched wooden architrave at the right end of the main range.

A 19th-century addition projects forward to the left, comprising a single tall storey with brick below and fish-scale tiles above the midrail, plain tile roof with crested ridge tiles, a cylindrical ventilator, moulded bargeboards, a nine-light mullioned and transomed window, and integral lean-tos to the right and left. A three-storey addition of circa 1883 to the right features banded plain and fish-scale tiles to the upper storey and red brick to the remainder, plain tile roof, moulded bargeboards, a red brick stack to the left side, a ridge stack towards the rear, a three-light second-floor casement, and four-light casements with segmental heads to each lower storey.

The interior of the 15th or early sixteenth-century section shows broad close-set joists and a dragon beam to the ground floor, gunstock-jowled posts, and a chamfered central tie-beam with evidence for bracing and fillet. The main range features long shaped jowls to the principal posts, a staggered butt purlin roof, and exposed framing to the rear wall with intermediate studs and two panels per storey. An axial row of three painted iron columns with palm-leaf capitals runs along the centre of the ground floor. The 17th-century extension to the wing displays exposed framing, gunstock-jowled posts, and two brick fireplaces with wooden bressumers; the roof has not been examined. Exposed arch-braced trusses light the left 19th-century wing. The ground floor of the circa 1883 wing retains a late 18th-century fireplace said to have come from The Coach House, High Street, Yalding.

A footpath of roughly-coursed stone setts with stone verges runs between the left porch of Cleaves Hall and Vicarage Road. The path is approximately four feet wide and extends about forty feet. The school was attended by the poet Edmund Blunden until 1918.