Badsell Manor Farmhouse

Badsell Manor Farmhouse is a moated farmhouse with medieval origins, rebuilt in the late 16th and 17th centuries, and extensively remodelled in the mid to late 19th century.

The whole house stands on a plinth faced with large coursed blocks of local sandstone. Most of the ground floor is constructed in 19th-century Flemish bond red brick with burnt headers, while most of the first floor is timber-framed and hung with 19th-century tile, including bands of scallop-shaped tile. The south-east front section is late 16th- or early 17th-century English bond red brick with sandstone ashlar quoins. The brick stacks, mostly dating from the late 16th or early 17th century, have contemporary chimneyshafts and support a peg-tile roof.

The house is two storeys throughout and follows an irregular double pile plan with a large front facing south-west. The front and back are each four rooms wide. An entrance hall sits between projecting parlours, with the left parlour having a projecting end stack and the right parlour an axial stack backing onto the left end room. This stack joins to the front lateral stack serving the left room. A dining room occupies the rear left end with an axial stack backing onto a small unheated room, probably a buttery. The main stair is positioned next to the buttery, and the kitchen occupies the rear right end with a rear lateral stack. This is a complex multi-phase house whose development is confused by extensive reuse of old timbers. The roof structure suggests the rear pile is the oldest part, with most of the front added in the late 16th and first half of the 17th century. The front stacks all date from that period.

The attractive four-bay front rises from the moat. The left three bays feature a symmetrical 1:1:1-window front of 19th-century casements with glazing bars. The centre bay contains the main doorway, recessed with a platform in front providing access across the moat by means of a 20th-century bridge. The doorway holds a 19th-century nine-panel door with overlight beneath a low segmental brick arch; the moulded beam above may date from the 17th century. Each bay has a separate roof running back into the main roof, with the centre roof half-hipped to the front and the flanking roofs hipped. The right end front bay is also recessed and forms a particularly impressive section of late 16th- or early 17th-century masonry and brickwork incorporating two adjacent stacks. The stone plinth has an irregular top and pronounced batter on the end corner. A straight join marks the junction between the two main flues, which have separate chimneyshafts. The right flue is decorated with a diaper pattern of burnt headers and topped by a pair of tall octagonal shafts with a star-shaped cornice. The left flue has a tall chimneyshaft with an attractive but irregular angular section.

The right south-eastern end wall is now the main entrance front, as the moat has been filled on this side. It displays a 2:1-window front under three gables. The left two-window section is early brick, while the sandstone two-light windows with segmental headed lights are probably 19th-century. The right one-window front is wholly 19th-century except for a 20th-century replacement ground floor window. All three gables have 19th-century bargeboards with apex pendants, and the right gable is jettied. Most windows in the rear and end walls are 20th-century replacement casements containing rectangular panes of leaded glass.

Interior features are largely the result of 19th and 20th-century modernisations. Some exposed beams are probably reused—the crossbeam in the rear dining room is an example. Both front parlours and the first-floor chamber in the left end have sandstone ashlar fireplaces with Tudor arch heads. The same chamber includes sections of a moulded wall plate. A good mid to late 17th-century stair features a closed string, square-section newel posts, moulded flat handrail, and turned vase-like oak balusters. The roof structure is complex and underwent substantial repair in the 19th century. The clean roof of common rafter A-frame trusses over the main rear part may be medieval, if the mortises are from missing soulaces. The roof over the front right parlour is late 16th or early 17th-century common rafter A-frame trussed with curving arch braces nailed on to provide the shape for a coved plaster ceiling over the parlour chamber.

According to the owners' research, the earliest documentary mention of the site dates from 1259. The front stack is illustrated in K. Gravett's Timber and Brick Building in Kent (1971), plate 107.