Slyfield Farmhouse, With Attached Garden Wall

Slyfield Farmhouse with Attached Garden Wall

This Grade I listed building at Great Bookham was originally part of Slyfield manor. It is probably 15th century in origin, though substantially altered and cased in brick in the early 17th century. It was detached from the manor and converted to a farmhouse in the 18th century, and has undergone further alterations in the 20th century. It now serves as a house.

The farmhouse is constructed of hand-made brick in Flemish bond with some blue headers and some flint, cladding internal timber framing, with a red tile roof. The building now forms an L-plan with the ranges joined at the north-west corner and consists of two storeys.

The western entrance front was altered in the 20th century and now features six first-floor windows. Above the ground floor runs a prominent 3-course band with tiled coping. The doorway, offset right of centre, sits beneath a dentilled hoodmould of ovolo and cavetto moulded brick and tile. It is now furnished with a Tudor-arched door and side windows, with 20th-century inserted 3-light casement windows on both floors. The roof is hipped and swept at the left end, with a ridge chimney towards the left and a gable chimney to the right.

The northern facade of the other range retains notable early 17th-century features. The ground floor is of flint finished with a deep coping of moulded brick containing a band of flint squares and coped with tiles. A doorway sits in the second bay, accessed by modern steps, with 3-light casements in the other bays. All these openings have brick surrounds and dentilled hoodmoulds. The first floor, set back from the ground floor, is of hand-made brick with a continuous dentilled drip-mould stepped over segmental-headed panels. It displays 3-light casements and a one-light window in the rhythm a-b-a-c-a-b-b. The roof is swept over prominent boarded eaves on scrolled brackets. At the left end of the first floor are coupled banded pilasters with remains of Ionic volutes, suggesting the range formerly continued further to the left. Both ranges display double first-floor bands to the rear, with 2-light casements with gauged brick heads and eaves on scrolled brackets.

The interior of the north wing, which appears to have been retainers' lodgings, is of three timber-framed bays with a crown-post roof and probably formerly had an open gallery on the south side. The crown-posts have arched braces to the collar-purlin. The tie-beams of all four frames have lap-joint trenches in the soffits approximately 1 metre from the south wall, indicating the position of a former longitudinal partition. Stopped chamfers run outside these trenches, and the wall-posts on this side are chamfered at first-floor level with peg-holes just below, suggesting a former gallery. The frame at the east end has a crown-post with a moulded base and arch-braces to the collar, and a tie-beam with cavetto chamfer on both sides and a large mortice in the soffit for a former arch-brace to the north end. The second and third frames have down-braces to the tie-beams, with mortices of former lateral partitions and ceilings. The frame at the west end has W-bracing. The west range includes timber framing with a double-chamfered post in the centre of the east side, and in the south bay two frames with mortices of former partitions in the soffits, and an undecorated crown-post roof with W-bracing. Both ranges have been altered at ground-floor level.

The attached garden wall runs approximately 40 metres west from the north-west corner. It stands approximately 3 metres high, has brick dentils and ridged coping, and large square gate piers in the centre, which have been altered.