Marle Place Including Courtyard Wall And Gateway Wall To The North West

Marle Place is a high-quality early 17th-century house with important later modifications and additions. The main building dates from the early 17th century (the porch is dated 1619), though it underwent considerable refurbishment in the 18th century and significant alterations during the 19th and early 20th centuries (including a rear addition dated 1858 and a late 19th-century conservatory). The house is listed together with its courtyard wall and gateway wall to the north west, which dates from the early 20th century.

The building is constructed with framed timber construction and was clad with tile-hanging in the 19th century, featuring bands of scalloped tiles. The roof is also 19th-century tiled with bands of scalloped tiles, and the building has brick chimney stacks.

The house faces north and is two storeys with an attic. It presents a symmetrical three-bay front with two gables, a projecting central gabled porch at two storeys, and deep eaves with moulded bargeboards, pendants and finials. The chimney shaft to the axial stack is particularly fine, comprising four octagonal clustered shafts with moulded star-shaped cornices. The gabled porch features an early 17th-century ovolo-moulded outer doorframe with returns on the ground floor, each incorporating a balustrade of six turned balusters. The porch door is late 19th or early 20th-century in 17th-century style with six panels and elaborately decorated strap hinges. The first floor of the porch has a coved oriel with a five-light ovolo-moulded transomed window, the transom with a cornice. The gabled bays to either side each contain a two-storey canted bay with a hipped roof and ovolo-moulded mullioned and transomed windows with four lights to the centre and one to each return; the attic windows are three lights with square leaded panes. The left east return has two gables to the east. The ground floor canted bays are late 19th or early 20th-century work, the left hand bay with moulded mullioned windows and the right hand bay with French windows. First and attic floor windows are three and four lights with transomed designs and square leaded panes. The rear elevation is irregular, with two wings on either side of a stair projection that was extended in 1858. A late 19th-century conservatory with a crested iron ridge adjoins the main block at the right west end.

The original plan was a compact two-room lobby entrance arrangement with principal rooms heated by back-to-back fireplaces in an axial stack, with a rear centre stair projection. The position of the original services is unclear, though one front room may have served as a kitchen or services may have occupied the rear where considerable remodelling has occurred. The stair projection was extended in 1858, and extensive refurbishment appears to date from the late 19th or early 20th centuries, including a cross passage broken through the axial stack on the ground floor, extensive window repair, and Vernacular Revival style cladding of the frame. Late 19th-century photographs by local Brenchley photographer William Hodges document the conservatory under construction.

The interior preserves interesting features from multiple periods. The cross passage through the axial stack has a circa early 20th-century coved ceiling. The right hand ground floor room was refurbished in the early 18th century with wall panelling, a bolection-moulded chimney-piece with integral cupboards, a cornice and decorated plaster ceiling frieze. A fine 17th-century dog-leg stair features turned balusters, an open string, moulded handrail and peaked finials, with evidence of alteration including flights down to the cellar and to an open-fronted closet off the half landing. First floor rooms preserve original 17th-century high-set ovolo-moulded three-light windows, blocked externally. The first floor left hand room has a moulded ceiling beam and exposed joists; the right hand room has plain ceiling carpentry apparently designed to take a plaster ceiling. Late 19th or early 20th-century panelling survives on both ground and first floors. Some of the jowled wall posts of the original frame are visible on the first floor.

The roof over the main range and stair projection is a clasped purlin roof.

A reproduction of a late 19th-century drawing of the house by William Twopeny is held in the National Monument Record.