White'S Farmhouse

White’s Farmhouse, now a house, largely dates from the late 16th century, with significant remodelling around 1670. The construction combines random bond brickwork on a sarsen stone base with a stone slate roof and brick stacks. It is a three-unit lobby entry plan farmhouse, with a rear wing added around 1670.

The main house is two storeys high and has a five-window front. A 20th-century hood shelters a mid-19th century five-panelled door. The ground floor windows are set within brick soldier arches, while the first-floor windows have segmental brick arches, both containing 20th-century casements. Decorative brick diaper patterning is visible, along with a string course and an eaves band, and a sundial sits at the top left. The roof is hipped and gabled, with a ridge and a right-end stack. The initials “IB 1670” are inscribed in the flared headers of the top right gable, which also retains an original four-light wood-mullion and transomed casement, along with rectangular panels of flint infill.

The interior features a cellar. The room on the right has a chamfered spine beam with run-out stops and a two-panelled 17th-century door, leading to a cast iron door in the fireplace that opens into a bread oven. The centre room’s fireplace is notable for its moulded limestone architrave with a pulvinated frieze to the overmantle, flanked by 17th-century panelling. A two-panelled door, complete with decorative hinges, gives access to a cupboard adjoining a dog-leg staircase within a stair turret. On the first floor, a timber-framed wall incorporates a late 16th-century three-light window with ovolo moulding, where the main house connects to the rear right wing. A rear gallery provides access to the stairs and rooms along the front. The first floor also contains 17th-century panelling and doors, fireplaces with moulded chalk architraves in the right and centre rooms, and exposed timber framing in the walls of the left room. The attic reveals an eight-bay collar-truss roof with butt purlins.

A single-storey wing, built around 1670, extends to the rear right; constructed of brick consistent with the main house’s right gable, it has a tiled roof and a three-window front. The roof utilizes a three-bay common rafter structure with butt purlins. A stair turret, also dating from around 1670, sits between this rear wing and the main rear wall. A late 20th-century wing has been added to the rear left.