Natal House

Natal House is a double-depth plan house dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, with later 19th-century modernisation. It is located on the south side of Hadlow High Street, set back from the road facing north. The front is built of Flemish bond brick, including burnt headers, while the rear is timber-framed and clad with peg tiles. It has brick stacks and chimneyshafts, and a peg-tile roof.

The house originally comprised two rooms wide and two rooms deep, with a main stair between the rear rooms. The front rooms were the principal rooms—a parlour to the left (east) and a kitchen to the right—with service rooms to the rear. A slightly projecting end stack is located on the parlour side, and the kitchen stack is shared with the adjoining house. In the late 19th century, Natal House was converted into the service block of the Victorian house to its right (west). Prior to that, there was likely a passage through the kitchen from the front doorway to the stair; a passage now runs along the back of the kitchen, apparently once leading to an opening in the right end wall.

The two-storey front presents a nearly symmetrical two-window façade. It has three 19th-century tripartite sash windows with central 12-pane sashes. The ground floor window on the right side has a low segmental arch above it. The parlour window on the ground floor left is a late 19th-century canted bay window with a flat roof, containing a tripartite sash with a 16-pane sash. The front doorway contains a 19th-century six-panel door, sheltered by a shallow flat-roofed hood. A flat brick band projects at first-floor level. The eaves have a moulded timber cornice. The roof is hipped at both ends. The rear has two parallel roofs at right angles to the front roof, both hipped to the rear. Some of the first-floor windows to the rear are original flat-faced mullion windows with rectangular panes of leaded glass. The stair window is also original, with a segmental arch head.

The interior features largely plain carpentry detail where exposed, though the visible roof structure appears to have been replaced in the 19th century.

Natal House is one of several attractive and varied listed buildings on Hadlow High Street.