Tatlingbury Farmhouse, Including Garden Walls Adjoining To The West

Tatlingbury Farmhouse, including garden walls adjoining to the west

Farmhouse dating from the mid-15th century with various 16th, 17th, and early 18th-century improvements, and some 19th-century modernisation. The building is timber-framed, though most of the front wall has been rebuilt or faced with 18th or 19th-century brick in Flemish bond with red brick; the earliest brickwork includes a higher proportion of burnt headers. The rear and end walls remain partly timber-framed, either weatherboarded or hung with peg-tile. The building has brick stacks and chimneyshafts, and a peg-tile roof.

The plan is essentially L-shaped, with the main block facing onto the garden to the west. The main block contains a 4-room plan comprising the principal rooms. At the right (south) end is a large parlour with a projecting rear lateral stack. Next to it is a relatively wide entrance hall with the main stair to the rear in the outshots; a corridor runs behind the left (northern) two rooms within the outshots. The centre left contains the dining room occupying most of the medieval hall, and at the left end another parlour. This parlour and the dining room are separated by an axial stack serving back-to-back fireplaces. A 2-room kitchen and services block projects at right angles to the rear of the left end parlour behind the corridor, with a projecting outer lateral stack that is now disused.

The main block preserves the remains of a mid-15th-century hall-house. The 2-bay hall occupied the present dining room and the adjoining part of the northern parlour. It was open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. There was certainly another one-bay room to the south, which is now the entrance hall; it is unclear whether this end was floored. A fragment of a moulded beam at the southern end of the hall may be part of a low partition screen, appearing too low for a dais beam. Little carpentry is exposed at the north end, and the roof has been rebuilt. The various 16th and 17th-century improvements are difficult to disentangle in the main block. At that period much of the timber-framing of the rear wall was replaced, the hall was floored, and the hall stack was inserted. The southern parlour is probably a 17th-century extension. At the north end the hall crosswall was removed at ground floor level to create a large room with a fireplace, a change that probably occurred in the 18th or 19th century. No evidence suggests that the rear outshots and kitchen block predate the 18th or 19th century.

The building is 2 storeys with attics in the roofspace of the main block.

The exterior features an irregular 4-window front of various 19th-century sashes, including 20 and 24-pane sashes, with the hall having a tripartite sash with central 16-pane sash. The ground floor windows have low brick segmental arches. The front doorway is right of centre and contains a 19th-century part-glazed panelled door. Marks on the brickwork above show it once had a tented roof hood or porch. The main roof is hipped to the left and half-hipped to the right. The right (south) end wall has a 20-pane sash in the blocked opening of a wider window, with tile hanging at first floor level. The southern parlour stack has tile weatherings at the back. The outshot is weatherboarded and contains one probably 18th-century window to the staircase, a single light containing diamond panes of old leaded glass. The rear block is brick at ground floor level and tile hung above, containing 20th-century casements with glazing bars.

The interior includes good carpentry detail from all the main building phases. However, little of the medieval structure is visible below the roof. The crossbeam in the northern parlour was originally a rail in the crosswall at that end of the medieval hall and has mortises along its soffit from the removed ground floor frame. At the southern end of the hall is a moulded rail which has been cut through at both ends, positioned too low to be a dais beam and possibly from a low partition screen. Any other medieval carpentry below roof level is hidden behind later plaster.

The southern parlour is a 17th-century extension. Its crossbeam is chamfered with step stops. The relatively small brick fireplace here has a replacement oak lintel. In the dining room, the former hall, the axial beam and joists are chamfered with step stops. The large brick fireplace has been somewhat restored but much is original; the bricks are small and narrow and the oak lintel is chamfered with scroll stops. The fireplace backing onto it in the northern parlour is 18th or 19th century. At first floor level much of the rear wall was rebuilt in the late 16th or 17th century. The frame has straight tension braces and there is no wall post supporting the medieval open truss tie-beam over the hall. However, part of the frame is medieval, including a massive wall post at the south end corner of the medieval house. The first floor chambers of the main block mostly have chamfered axial beams with step stops.

The remains of the original mid-15th-century roof survive mostly over the medieval hall. The open truss has a tie-beam of large scantling with the remains of moulded arch braces and, along the front wall, a length of a moulded wall plate. The crown post above is square in section with shallow moulded base and cap. Its 4-way braces are wide and one is carved from the solid. The structure over the medieval hall is smoke-blackened from the open hearth fire. At the southern end of the medieval hall is a closed crown post truss with down braces. To the south there is evidence that the medieval roof was hipped, and the roof structure here is clean. Most of the common rafter A-frames are medieval but were taken down and re-erected when the roof was mended. These repairs could well have been quite early, involving scarfing a new and clean length of crown purlin over the northern bay of the hall, which extends to the northern gable where there was originally another closed crown post truss. The roof over the 17th-century parlour extension is carried on collared common rafter couples.

The front garden is flanked by probably 19th-century brick walls. The northern one, between the garden and farmyard, bows northwards each side of a gateway with square-section gate posts topped with pyramid caps. The walls are built in flying bond red brick with bricks on top shaped for weathered coping.