Cattsford And Associated Privy

Former farmhouse, now house, and three-seater privy, both of circa 1775, located at Dingleden Lane, Benenden. A late 19th-century porch and 20th-century windows have been added to the south-west front of the house.

The house has a ground floor of red brick with tile-hanging above. The south-west front is laid in Flemish bond with some vitrified headers, whilst the other sides are in English garden wall bond. The roof is tiled, with the front range gabled and the rear range part hipped and part catslide, with three brick chimneysstacks, two of which are external. The privy is timber-framed, clad in weatherboarding with a hipped tiled roof.

The house is a two-bay end chimneystack house with a catslide roof extending across the north-eastern half of the rear elevation. The front range is of two storeys with attics in the gable end. The privy, situated approximately 1.5 metres to the north-west, is a small square single-storey structure.

The south-west side of Cattsford, facing Dingleden Lane, has two windows to each floor, now 20th-century tripartite casements. A late 19th-century gabled wooden porch with side windows and bargeboard with moulded pendant shelters an earlier four-panelled door in a moulded wooden architrave. The south-east elevation displays a large external brick chimneystack, a small attic window in the gable end, two 19th-century casements to the first floor, and a 19th-century multipane tripartite casement with a wide door to the ground floor. The north-west elevation has 19th-century casement windows and a wide doorcase in the catslide with a plank door. The north-east or rear elevation has a hipped roof to the left-hand side with no windows, and the remainder has a catslide roof, also without windows, and a lean-to privy. The free-standing privy has a ledged three-plank door to the south-west side. The south-east side has wider oak planks with old nails. The north-west side features a small wooden louvred opening. The north-east side has a hinged flap at the base to access the buckets; behind it lies the original pit, approximately 1.2 metres square and brick-lined.

The southern front ground floor room of Cattsford has a 3-metre-wide open fireplace with wooden bressumer retaining the hole for the spit bracket, and two fielded panelled cupboards to the eastern side. This room has an axial beam of 18th or 19th-century date. The south rear room or kitchen has a smaller open fireplace, approximately 1.7 metres wide, with wooden bressumer and brick piers. The ceiling has exposed floor joists and a plank door. The northern wall has a brick bread oven. The adjoining room to the north features a reused 15th-century dais beam over an 18th-century partition wall with diagonal braces and under an 18th-century ceiling with beams of thin timber scantling. An 18th-century winder staircase is approached through a plank door. The first floor rear south bedroom was originally ceiled over but the ceiling has been removed to reveal exposed rafters with a ridgepiece and kingpost with dragon ties to the corners. There are two plank doors and some wide floorboards. The front bedrooms have no exposed beams. A very steep wooden ladder staircase leads to the attics. The interior of the privy retains a wooden seat with two hinged flaps accessing two latrines with circular wooden holes, adjoined by a lower latrine for children. Pencil graffiti on the walls is probably early 20th-century.

Historical records for a property called Kersford date back to 1643, when a partition between heirs in gavelkind of 27 September 1643 refers to a "messuage called Kersford, barn, oasthouse, stable, buildings, garden and 12 pieces of land." A copy of the will of Matthew Robbins of 1668 grants to his nephew "the rents of all his lands in Benenden and Rolvenden, being a messuage called Kirsford." A quitclaim for a legacy of £50 dated 31 December 1674 refers to a legacy "charged on land called Kirsford in Benenden and Rolvended." A marriage settlement of 11 and 12 August 1770 refers to a "messuage, barn and buildings called Cattsford."

Both house and privy are shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1891. The house has no front porch on this map but had acquired one by the 1898 Ordnance Survey map. Otherwise the footprint has remained unchanged, but since the 1908 Ordnance Survey map the range of associated farm buildings to the south-west of the house has been demolished.

Cattsford was a tenant farm until the 1930s, when it became a nursery and is now in residential use.