Church Farm

Church Farm is a farmhouse with a possibly later 16th-century core, cased in brick and partly rebuilt in the later 18th century, with some 20th-century rebuilding and additions.

The building is a brick-cased structure facing south-east with three front bays and two storeys, topped with dormer windows lighting converted attics. The front brick casing, typical of the area, displays decorative use of blue headers in two phases, both probably from the later 18th century. The left-hand two bays are the older section, with irregularly bonded reddish bricks and dark blue headers, representing a refronting of the narrow-bricked gable wall to the left, which is probably late 17th or early 18th century. The right-hand front bay uses orangey brick in regular Flemish bond with blue brick headers creating a chequered pattern, probably representing a rebuilding of this end of the property (shown with an end-jetty on an illustration of 1764), extending to include a short, integral single-storey range to the rear. The front door sits at the centre immediately against the right edge of the older two bays, with a 20th-century brick porch. The windows provide approximate symmetry to the front: three-light casements to the end bays with ground-floor casements slightly longer than those above, a small two-light casement to the centre of the first floor, and a small pair of four-pane casements to the left of the front door lighting the staircase within. Most windows have been renewed in uPVC.

To the rear-right stands a large external chimney stack with flint and stone lower part and brick above, recognisably that shown on the 1764 illustration. A similar (though presumably rebuilt) chimney rises from the rear-left. Twenty-first-century brick lean-tos against the rear and a 20th-century brick extension are of no architectural interest. The roof is of red tile, relaid when partly replaced in the early 20th century, with two brick stacks of this date rising from the centre of the older two bays and from the right-hand gable.

Internally, the front door opens into a hall extending the full depth of the property, with a simple staircase of around 1800 leading off at right angles against the outside wall. The ground floor comprises a front room with kitchen behind in the right-hand bay, a dining room in the left-hand bay, and a small office in the centre bay with bathroom behind. The first floor plan is roughly replicated, with some surviving planked doors, possibly 18th century. A curved brace is visible in the centre-rear first-floor bedroom relating to the possible crown post roof above. The staircase continues to the attic floor with a bedroom in each end bay (only the right-hand with fireplace) and a store room to the centre. The attic rooms are set within the probably later 16th-century roof, which survives largely intact in the older two bays with tie beams, collars and common rafters (and thus possibly of crown-post type), as seen most clearly in the closed attic space over the collars. Over the newer bay is a replacement roof of the early 20th century.

Church Farm is identified by the Victoria County History as the rectory farm, the living being in the possession of All Souls College from 1440. It was therefore either the college or its tenants by agreement which successively built and rebuilt the farmhouse. The Church Farm complex stands immediately west of St Margaret's church (Grade I) on the north edge of Lewknor. The complex includes, on its east edge, a Grade I listed mid-14th-century aisled house later converted to a barn.