Rawridge Farmhouse

Rawridge Farmhouse

A farmhouse with parts possibly dating to the early 16th century, though the most obvious features are from the late 16th to early 17th century, with a major rearrangement in the mid to late 17th century and modernisation in the late 19th to early 20th century. The building is constructed from roughcast local stone and flint rubble, including sections of cob, with stone rubble stacks topped with 19th and 20th century brick. The roof is thatched, with slate covering the rear service block.

The main block faces south-east and is built across the hillslope, containing a 4-room plan. At the south-west end, next to the lane, is a former kitchen with a gable-end stack. Adjacent to this is the entrance hall, which contains the main stair, a small pantry, and a passage through to the back. Right of centre is a parlour (the former hall) with an axial stack backing onto the entrance hall section. At the right end is an unheated inner room formerly used as a dairy. A 19th-century single-room service block projects at right angles from the rear of the kitchen.

The current layout appears to derive from a major rearrangement of a late medieval 3-room-and-through-passage plan. The right two rooms likely represent the hall and inner room from the original house. The roofspace is inaccessible, making it impossible to determine the original layout with certainty, though it seems probable the house began as some form of open hall house, heated by an open hearth fire. The hall and parlour fireplaces and both these rooms had been floored over before the mid to late 17th-century rearrangement, at which time the entrance hall and kitchen were constructed, replacing the former passage and service end room.

The farmhouse is two storeys high. The front elevation features an irregular arrangement of three windows of 20th-century casements with glazing bars, the first-floor examples rising a short distance into the eaves. The front doorway, positioned roughly centrally, contains an old studded plank door set behind a late 19th to early 20th-century gabled porch with trellis sides. A projection at the left end is thought to be a disused curing chamber. The roof is gable-ended to the left and half-hipped to the right.

The rear elevation includes 20th-century casements similar to those at the front, except for one first-floor window to the kitchen chamber, which is probably 18th century. This window has flat-faced mullions and contains rectangular panes of leaded glass.

The interior is largely the product of thorough, though superficial, late 19th to early 20th-century modernisation. Some earlier features remain exposed. Although the former kitchen fireplace is blocked, its oak lintel is visible and is chamfered with scroll-nick stops, as are the crossbeams. A cupboard to the left of the fireplace is thought to occupy a former walk-in curing chamber. The hall fireplace is blocked, but the crossbeam is chamfered with step stops. The inner room contains a plain chamfered crossbeam. The roofspace is inaccessible, with the visible portions of the trusses below ceiling level boxed in or plastered over. The truss over the hall may be a jointed cruck.

This farmhouse forms part of a group with other listed buildings in the scattered hamlet of Rawridge.