Park Farmhouse

Park Farmhouse

Farmhouse of the home farm of Somerhill, now part of the Hadlow Estate. Probably dating to 1850, architect unknown. The building is constructed with timber framing on brick footings, with a tiled roof featuring bands of scalloped tiles and brick chimney stacks. It is built in the Vernacular Revival style, freely drawing on elements of 17th-century traditional south-east architecture.

The house forms part of a designed Victorian farmstead, grouped with contemporary farm buildings in matching style. The layout is deliberately picturesque and irregular, organised to be both attractive and functional. The main house faces south, with its west elevation overlooking the farm lane. It sits south of and above the dairy, which is elaborately detailed and positioned as the first building encountered on approach to the farmstead. Other buildings in the group include a turkey house to the east and a combination building containing a milking parlour, sited to the south with a show front facing the farm lane, which continues past the group towards the estate laundry. The farmhouse roof runs on a west-east axis with gabled wings at right angles on the south side, overlooking the dairy.

The building is two storeys with gabled roofs, deep eaves, and moulded bargeboards to the gables. It features multiple and clustered chimney shafts, some octagonal and some diagonally set, with corbelled brick cornices. The walls are close-studded timber framing with diagonal braces; the gables are more elaborately treated, including curved braces. The north elevation is asymmetrical, with a gabled front at the right and a gabled porch to the left. The porch has timber-framed side walls with sections of open balustrades featuring barleysugar balusters and porch seats. The original front door is Tudor arched with a plank and cover strip design. Windows are 2-light casements, some retaining original glazing of square leaded panes. The first floor window in the main block above the porch is a gabled dormer.

The west elevation overlooking the farm lane is particularly ornate. The gable end of the main block, to the right, has a jettied gable with a moulded fascia. Below the jetty is a section of open balustrade with barleysugar balusters, supported on a projecting beam at first floor level. The beam is carried on curved braces and has a moulded fascia. A 2-light ground floor casement has the outer top corners of the timber frame ornamented with carved fleur-de-lis, with additional carvings on the central mullion and below the sill. A 2-light casement in the gable is glazed with square leaded panes. The side elevation of the rear wing, set back to the left, is blank with a lateral stack and steps down to the cellar. The right (east) return of the main block has a Tudor arched doorway with an original door to the left and two 2-light casements. The rear elevation is similarly styled with three gables to the north and a single-storey projection with a two-span roof.

The interior has not been inspected but may retain original joinery and fireplaces.

George Devey was employed on the Somerhill Estate, though no documentary evidence is currently known to connect him with Park Farm.