Lower Church Farmhouse

Lower Church Farmhouse is a former farmhouse, originally a row of two houses, dating to the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It was enlarged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with a small late 19th-century extension and some circa 1980 modernisation. The house is timber-framed, with the ground floor underbuilt with Flemish bond red brick. The framing above is hung with peg-tiled cladding. Brick stacks and chimneyshafts rise from the roof, which is covered in peg-tiles.

The house faces southwest. The original plan was two rooms wide and two rooms deep, with a central front staircase. The left front room has a projecting gable-end stack. An axial stack between the rear rooms served back-to-back fireplaces. A late 19th-century porch now provides the main entrance on the left end, possibly replacing an earlier porch on the front. A late 18th/early 19th century addition created a front section, originally concealing a late 16th/early 17th century two-room lobby entrance plan farmhouse, likely with integral rear outshots. The right front and back rooms are now divided off as a separate house.

The house is two storeys high, with attics in the roofspace of the older part. There were probably late 16th/early 17th century lean-to outshots to the rear. Cellars are located below the ground floor.

The front elevation has a regular but unsymmetrical three-window arrangement. The right two windows are late 18th/early 19th century 16-pane sashes, with low segmental brick arches over the ground floor windows. The left first floor window is a contemporary timber casement with an iron-framed casement and rectangular panes of leaded glass. Two left ground floor windows are 20th-century casements with glazing bars. The late 19th-century porch on the left end contains a four-panel door with a small sash window alongside. The house has two parallel roofs; the front roof is gable-ended, while the rear roof is steeply pitched and taller, gable-ended to the left, half-hipped to the right, and continues down over the outshots.

The only accessible section during survey revealed late 16th/early 17th century features confined to the rear. The rear left room and chamber above have chamfered spine beams with run-out stops. Fireplaces have been rebuilt in the 20th century. The cellar below has walls of coursed sandstone, with a brick-walled cellar under the front. The attic floor is carried on a crossbeam below tie beam level. The roof of the rear block is of three uneven bays, with tie-beam trusses, clasped side purlins and queen struts.