Brook Farmhouse

Brook Farmhouse is a two-storey farmhouse with attics and a cellar, dating from the late 16th and early 17th centuries but substantially enlarged and remodelled in the early 19th century. The older part is timber-framed, some of it exposed but most clad with weatherboards. The 19th-century additions are built of Flemish bond red brick with decorative burnt headers. The 16th-century chimney stack is constructed of coursed local sandstone blocks; the other stacks are brick. The building is roofed in tile.

The house follows a double-depth plan and faces south-west. A central entrance hall gives access to front and back rooms on either side. The left (north-west) parlour contains a large axial stack projecting into the entrance hall. According to the owner, a steep main stair once rose over this stack, but now the only stair is a winder stair between the two rear rooms. The front right room has a projecting end stack, and the rear right room (the kitchen) has a projecting rear lateral stack. The rear left room is an unheated service room.

The left front and back rooms belong to the original late 16th and early 17th-century farmhouse. The front room was a large heated hall or parlour, while the back room was a small unheated service space, probably a buttery or dairy. The original house likely extended further forward; the front wall was rebuilt in the 19th century during the remodelling.

The three-window front appears symmetrical at first glance but is not. The ground floor left window is set higher, and both left windows are further from the central doorway than the right ones. The outer windows are 19th-century 16-pane sashes with low segmental brick arches over the ground floor windows. The central first-floor window is a 12-pane sash positioned over the front doorway, which contains a panelled and part-glazed 19th-century door behind a trellis porch. The main roof is hipped at both ends. The right (south-east) end room features a doorway containing a 20th-century door beneath a 19th-century flat hood, with 16-pane sashes on each floor beside it. The left (north-west) end wall is weatherboarded and retains late 16th and early 17th-century oak 5-light windows with ovolo-moulded mullions on each floor. The rear wall of the old part has exposed framing, partly concealed by a 20th-century conservatory. The first-floor jetty retains one original scroll-shaped bracket.

Inside the unheated rear service room, the late 16th and early 17th-century framing is exposed—close-studded with a middle rail and straight braces. This room also contains two windows with original chamfered oak mullions and grilles of slender diamond mullions above. The front parlour is lined with 17th-century small-field oak panelling, which may belong to this room but has been reset. The crossbeam is boxed in. A large brick fireplace has a plain oak lintel. The chamber above is similarly lined with panelling, and a couple of panelled cupboard doors hang on 17th-century H-hinges. A four-bay ceiling features intersecting beams, chamfered with scroll stops. The remainder of the house displays much early 19th-century joinery, and the roof structure dates from that period.

The building is approached by a bridge across a stream. The course of this stream might indicate that the farmstead was once a moated site.