The White House

The White House is a house dating to the late 15th century, with significant extensions and alterations in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was remodelled around 1800 for William Buckle, the vicar from 1787 to 1832. Originally built as a timber-framed structure with jettied wings, the left side wall exhibits close studding with brick nogging. The house is roughcast with a hipped roof of old tiles, and features a brick stack at the right end and later lateral stacks. It has an overall U-plan, extended to a double-depth layout.

The symmetrical right side, dating from around 1800, has a four-window range and a stone porch with columns. The entrance is a six-panelled door, flanked by glazed strips, and topped with a decorative overlight containing armorial glass. The façade features two-light casement windows, with a canted bay to the left displaying three-light leaded casements and a parapet. A single-storey rendered bay with a plank door and leaded casement connects the main house to a two-storey range to the left, which is also rendered and has a hipped roof of old tiles. A brick wing, dating to the early 19th century, extends to the rear left and incorporates a canted oriel window. An older wing of chalk rubble, with timber lintels, adjoins this, and contains sash windows and an early 19th century brick round-arched stair-light with ornamental leading and a spandrel-pane of 16th-century Flemish glass depicting Calvary.

Inside, the left room reveals late 15th-century moulded beams, exposed timber framing, and a four-centred doorway with carved trefoils and quatrefoils. The central hall, originally a late 15th-century space, was divided around 1800 into a dining room with a fireplace and a hall with a concave ceiling and decorative fanlights over two doorways. An early 17th-century dog-leg staircase, possibly reset, is located at the rear, featuring turned balusters, a moulded handrail, and a newel finial. A particularly fine room of around 1800 is situated on the first floor to the rear left, containing a fireplace and double-leaf doors.

The roof contains a lower king-strut truss in the centre, with clasped purlins and curved windbraces in the flanking wings, which were originally gabled to the front before the roof was remodelled around 1800. Documentation from 1665 indicates the owner, Thomas Eustace, paid tax on six hearths, placing the house as the third largest in the area after Stonor House and Pyrton House. In 1809, it was described as "one of the prettiest abodes" following William Buckle’s alterations. A rare traceried wood doorway from the late 15th century survives.