St Andrew'S House

St Andrew's House, Billingshurst

House dating to the mid 17th century or earlier, with mid 18th-century and 20th-century extensions and additions.

The building is constructed as an oak timber frame on a Horsham stone and brick plinth. The first floor has been re-clad in clay peg tile, while the ground floor is rendered on all elevations. The roof structure consists of oak and chestnut timbers in pegged, close-coupled rafters with clasped purlins and collars, covered in clay peg tiles with two brick chimneystacks. Windows throughout are 20th-century wooden casements.

Originally a three-bay, two-storey cottage with a lobby entrance to the east of the chimneystack, the building now comprises two parallel ranges, each of three bays. The plan was modified in the mid 18th century with the addition of a second identical range to the rear, creating a three-bay by two-bay property under a pitched M-shaped roof with a secondary fireplace and brick chimney. In the 1930s, the western range was extended by approximately one metre in its northern two and a half bays, and its pitched roof was replaced with a flat roof.

The first floor was originally clad in wattle-and-daub infilled panels with weatherboarding, now replaced by clay peg tile. The ground floor, currently rendered, retains internal evidence of original wattle-and-daub panels and some brick infilling. The front elevation has regular fenestration with one three-pane casement in each bay to ground and first floors, except for a small single-light window above the door. The southern elevation contains a single two-pane first-floor casement. The rear western elevation has multi-pane windows of varying sizes, one to each bay on both floors. The northern elevation has no windows. Doors in the eastern and western elevations are 1930s in date with modern timber-framed porches.

Internally, the oak timber frame is visible in all rooms. The eastern range retains much original framing, including diagonal downbraces visible in the first-floor bedrooms. Most of the original rear ground-floor frame has been removed in the southern bay but survives at first-floor level. Much 18th-century partitioning to the first floor survives, along with some wide oak floorboards. The fireplaces are late 19th century, though set within original stacks in four instances. The principal beams show evidence of shallow chamfers, with only one beam in the central frame displaying a visible lamb's-tongue chamfer stop—a feature suggesting an earlier construction date, though the weight and proportions of the timbers support a mid 17th-century date, possibly with re-used timber.

The building appears to be part of the original settlement of Andrew's Hill, located on Stane Street, the Roman road from London to Chichester. It is situated near two other listed buildings: Flagstones (Grade II), a 16th-century timber-framed cottage, and Home Cottage and Webb Cottage (Grade II), dating to the 17th century or earlier. St Andrew's House appears on Ordnance Survey maps from 1876 onwards. The 1938 Ordnance Survey map shows an extension at the northern end of the cottage, no longer extant but with stone remains visible in the garden store, probably contemporary with the mid 18th-century rear extension.