Leyland House

Leyland House, No. 12 The Street, Wrecclesham, Farnham

A house, formerly a farmhouse, dating mainly from the mid-18th century but retaining part of an earlier 17th-century building to the north. It is built of brick in English bond to the east, Flemish bond to the sides and Sussex bond to the rear, with a tiled roof featuring two end brick chimneystacks. The northern chimney is larger and there is a catslide roof to the rear. The building is two storeys with a cellar at the southern end and three windows facing east.

The plan consists of three bays with a central entrance, end chimneystacks and an integral full-width outshot to the rear.

The east or entrance front displays a brick modillion cornice. The windows are 20th-century oak casements with rubbed brick lintels and leaded lights, most fitted with pintle hinges. The central doorcase has a moulded architrave and a flat hood on brackets, with a six-panelled door whose top two panels are glazed and lower panels fielded. The north side is of painted brick without window openings. The south side is tile-hung to the upper floor with two casement windows. The west or rear elevation has a 20th-century casement window.

Internally, the northern ground floor room, originally the main living room and cooking source and now a sitting room, contains an open fireplace with 17th-century brickwork and a wooden bressumer with saltholes and wooden side seats. An axial beam with a lamb's tongue stop is present. A two-panelled door leads into the original Parlour, now the Dining Room, to the south. This space has a central axial beam and walls with 18th-century wooden partitions of thin scantling originally plastered over. An early 19th-century built-in china cupboard with serpentine shelves survives. The rear outshot has exposed beams and a plank ledged door with forged metal hinges and latch. A 20th-century straight flight staircase leads to the upper floor, which retains original door architraves and some exposed beams. The roof structure comprises one raking queenstrut with a carpenter's mark to the north and three upright queenposts with clasped purlins, rafters and ridgepiece, all surviving intact. A cellar to the southern side is accessed by winding stairs and contains a well and three niches for standing candles.

Documentary evidence indicates this was an isolated freehold curtilage amongst copyhold curtilages of Farnham manor belonging to the Bishop of Winchester. These were all medieval farmsteads, and this site was probably also a farmstead. It appears to be shown on Rocque's 1768 map. On the 1839 and 1872 maps it is depicted dwarfed by adjoining buildings, some of which were in use as a malthouse with a reference to a hopkiln, though these adjoining buildings had been demolished by the mid-20th century. The house was called Leyland House in the 19th century. The ground floor retains evidence of a one-storey building once attached to it, said to have been a butcher's shop shown in postcards from 1905 and 1910 but since demolished.