Lime Tree House

Lime Tree House

House and shop, formerly a pair of houses, situated on the north side of Hadlow High Street. Built in the late 17th or early 18th century, with some 19th and 20th century modernisation.

The main structure is constructed in Flemish bond red brick with timber-framed end walls clad with peg-tile above first floor level. The rear kitchen block is built in English bond brick at ground floor level, with timber-framing above clad in peg-tile and painted weatherboards. The building features brick stacks and chimneyshafts, and a peg-tile roof.

The main block is built parallel to the street, facing south-east, with a 4-room plan comprising 2 rooms on each side of a central axial stack that serves back-to-back fireplaces. It was originally constructed as a pair of mirror-plan houses, one on each side of the stack, but now forms a single property. An integral rear stair block is positioned to the rear of the right heated room, though trimmers in the joists over the left heated room suggest a stair once existed inside that room. A one-room plan kitchen block projects at right angles to the rear near the right end and has a gable-end stack; this may be an earlier 17th century building incorporated into the later house. Another rear block projecting at right angles at the left end, also one-room plan with an outer lateral stack, appears to be an earlier 17th century structure that was refurbished in the 19th century. The main block rises to 2 storeys with attics in the roofspace.

The front elevation displays a regular 4-window arrangement that was probably originally symmetrical. The ground floor contains 2 twentieth-century shops, each with a central door flanked by large windows with glazing bars, with a further twentieth-century door at each end. First floor windows are twentieth-century casements, with hipped-roof attic dormers inserted in original openings. A flat brick band projects at first floor level, and the eaves are plain. The roof is half-hipped at each end with a shaped chimneyshaft that is partly of late 17th or early 18th century date. Both rear blocks are gable-ended with twentieth-century casements containing glazing bars. The outer side of the left rear block, facing School Lane, includes a nineteenth-century doorway with a loading hatch doorway above.

Internally, the rear blocks contain the oldest fabric, though much is concealed behind plaster. The left rear block is reported to include timber-framed walls of large scantling with curving tension braces. The ground floor of the right rear block features a 4-panel intersecting beam ceiling with chamfered crossbeams, though the main axial beam is boxed in. The fireplace here is blocked, and the lintel is reported to have burnt through. Above is the tie-beam of a formerly closed truss, though the roofspace here and in the left rear block is inaccessible.

In the main block, all rooms contain axial beams. Most are plain chamfered, except that in the left heated room which has step stops, and the right end first floor chamber which has scroll stops. Large ground floor fireplaces are brick with oak lintels. The first floor right fireplace contains a chimneypiece of probable late 17th or early 18th century date. The first floor includes considerable late 17th and early 18th century joinery detail, including 2-panel doors, plank doors with strap hinges, and cupboards. The straight flight stair is broken through towards the bottom, but the lower newel post is original, a square section post with a carved monster finial. The stair features a closed string with a moulded handrail and turned bulbous balusters. The main block roof comprises A-frame trusses with staggered butt purlins.

Lime Tree House is part of a good group of varied listed buildings in the centre of Hadlow.