Howards Farm

Howards Farm

Howards Farm is a timber-framed smoke bay house dating to around 1600, with a later inserted stack. The building was heavily restored and extended in 2006 and 2007.

The structure is timber-framed with red brick infill laid in English bond at ground floor level, and tile-hung above. The roof is covered in clay tile and the windows are hardwood.

The building's front elevation faces south and is four bays wide, with the second bay from the west being a narrow smoke bay. The roof is pitched, half-hipped with a gablet to the west and gable-ended to the east. The smoke bay now contains a massive brick stack, a ground-floor entrance lobby to the south and a connecting passageway to the north, creating a lobby-entry arrangement. The bays on either side of the smoke bay each provide a single room on ground and first floors. The east end bay is subdivided into smaller rooms and circulation space. To the rear is a two-storey early 21st-century extension linking through to the original house on both floors.

The stair from ground to first floor is within the extension, while the stair from first floor to attic is in the easterly bay; both are modern, though the latter replaces an early stair in the same position. The attics of the two east bays are interconnected and link through to the west end bay via the south side of the stack.

The south elevation has a ground and first floor window to each of the three full bays. The smoke bay has the front door surrounded by an open-sided porch at ground floor, and a small window above. The distinctive roof form, the position and size of the ridge stack, and exposed historic timber frame at ground floor reveal the building's origins. However, the building has been heavily restored externally, with the regularity and character of the brickwork, tile hanging, window joinery and porch all dating from the early 21st-century restoration. The rear is largely screened by the two-storey extension across most of the north elevation. At first floor the link between old and new is made with a corridor fully glazed at either end.

Much of the surviving timber frame is evident in the interior. At ground floor this is mainly in the floor frame. In the west end room the floor comprises a spine beam which appears to be a reused timber, evident from the number of empty sockets in its length. The floor joists run north to south and are mostly historic, though some have been replaced to the south where a stringer marks where a later stair was added (present at the time of the building's 1975 recording) and has since been removed with the opening re-ceiled.

The room to the east of the stack contains a large inglenook fireplace, and the rebuilding of the brick stack is evident from the brickwork appearance. This room was the historic hall, a high-status space indicated by the spine beam and floor joists being chamfered with stepped stops, and being the only heated ground floor room. The joists are a mixture of early timbers and carefully matched replicas dating from the early 21st century. The east end bay now forms a study, utility room and lobby into the rear extension, with floor joists running east to west in a mixture of old and new. The two openings in the rear wall of the early house leading into the later extension both have diamond sockets in the underside of the wall plate indicating the location of early windows.

The timber frame of the rear wall is visible within the extension at ground and first floors. At first floor the framing is evident in the rooms either side of the stack, and there is a blocked mullioned window in the easterly room. Large curved braces are present in the cross walls between the bays and in some of the outer walls. Small back-to-back fireplace openings in the rooms either side of the stack appear to be original; the stack at first floor and within the attic has not been rebuilt, with bricks approximately two inches high. The east end bay contains the bathroom and hallway with the stair giving access to the attic. The ceiling here contains both early and replacement timbers.

Within the attic space of the two east bays the replaced roof frame is visible. The roof-framing of the smoke bay survives, as do the blackened inside faces of the plastered bay partitions. In the west bay the original roof structure survives; this is a queen-post roof with clasped purlins and curved wind braces.