Church House

Church House, 72 Edenbridge High Street

A timber-framed building of medieval origins, substantially altered and adapted over five centuries. The core structure dates from 1378 to 1396 and comprised a two-bay hall with a service crosswing to the south and a parlour room to the north. An early sixteenth-century kitchen extension extends to the west. The open hall was floored over and a chimneystack inserted in the late sixteenth century, probably following building work documented in a will of 1577 when the property was known as Doggetts. The building was refronted and further altered in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Originally a farmhouse, it later served as town council offices.

The structure is timber-framed throughout, refronted in diaper brickwork with blue headers to the east, whilst the south-east gable retains fishscale tiles. The south front displays some exposed timber framing with curved braces and plaster infilling on the first floor, with square framing and brick infill to the ground floor. The north front shows a mixture of plain and fishscale tiles, and square framing is visible above the brickwork of the west wing. The roof is tiled with an off-centre ridge stack and external sandstone and brick stacks to the south. The building is two storeys, with the west wing rising to one storey and attics.

The east front has four cambered window openings, three with lead casements in wooden frames and one blank. A late eighteenth-century panelled door in a moulded frame stands to the left, with a nineteenth-century wooden doorway in a square porch also to the left. A parapet, brick bands and plinth complete the frontage. The left-side gable is jettied with a moulded plaster soffit, featuring a tripartite sash window to the gable and casements to the ground floor. The south front displays a large external stack with a sandstone base. The west front has three casements with leaded lights and a twentieth-century plank door in a moulded architrave. The west wing features a twelve-pane sash window with a cambered head and a gabled dormer. A twentieth-century extension to the extreme west is not of special interest.

The interior preserves significant medieval and post-medieval features. The south ground-floor room contains post and panel boarding to the north wall, exposed square-section floor joists, Jacobean plank and muntin panelling, an eighteenth-century serpentine shelved corner cupboard and an eighteenth-century two-panelled door. The hall features an early nineteenth-century brick floor laid in a herringbone pattern. A central room contains an inserted open fireplace with a wooden bressumer with spandrels and two spice alcoves with seats. The north side retains Jacobean plank and muntin panelling and a fragment of a moulded dais beam with ogee moulding. A two-inch chamfered spine beam with lambs tongue stops and similar floor joists runs through the space. The north bay, the former parlour, has exposed square-section joists. An early nineteenth-century staircase with stick balusters connects the floors.

The first floor displays jowled posts and wide oak floorboards. A six-panelled door to the south-east room retains an L-hinge to the top and a cock's head hinge to the base. Early nineteenth-century plank doors are typical of the floor. The attic stairs date to the early nineteenth century.

The sixteenth-century west wing contains two-inch chamfered floor joists with lambs tongue stops and a crownpost roof of very late form with three thin braces to the central truss. Smoke-blackened timbers indicate that the space originally functioned as an open hall, possibly a kitchen, and suggest there may have been a timber chimneystack at an earlier stage. The northernmost bay features an octagonal crownpost with four head braces and saltire bracing to the north, typical of late medieval construction.