The Gardens, Including Outbuildings Adjoining To North

House and outbuildings, once two cottages. Early 17th century, possibly earlier in places, enlarged and rearranged in the late 17th or 18th century, with a 19th century linhay. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings with stone or cob stacks, one featuring an ashlar chimney shaft and the others topped with 19th and 20th century brick. Thatch roof.

The building is L-shaped with the main block facing south. Its plan comprises two rooms with an entrance lobby and stair at the right (east) end and another lobby between the rooms. The right room and entrance lobby were once a separate cottage but have since been united with the main house. The right room has a large projecting rear lateral stack, while the left room has an end stack. A long rear block with a lower roofline projects at right angles behind the left (western) room. Adjacent to the main block are two domestic rooms with an outer lateral stack, behind which stands a barn (possibly part of the early 17th century house) and the 19th century linhay facing onto the rear courtyard. The building is two storeys.

The main front features an irregular three-window front of late 19th and 20th century replacement casements with glazing bars, and the first floor windows have thatch eyebrows above them. The main doorway, positioned left of centre, contains a late 19th to early 20th century part-glazed four-panel door with a 20th century porch with hipped thatch roof on rustic posts. A plainer doorway appears at the right end. The roof is hipped to the right and gable-ended to the left. The left end stack displays an ashlar chimney shaft with weathered offsets. Around the angle between the two blocks are some 20th century brick outshots. The rear block retains a 17th century oak three-light window frame with moulded mullions, cut back slightly to accommodate 19th century casements. The barn has full height 19th century plank doors with a small hood carried down over the eaves, and the opposite barn door is smaller and stable-type, appearing much older. The linhay is open-fronted with full height posts (Alcock's Type T1) and a hipped roof at the end.

The interior is largely the result of apparently superficial 19th and 20th century modernisations that conceal most of the earlier fabric and complicate definitive interpretation. However, the earliest part appears to be the rear block including the left room of the main block. In the barn, an early 17th century side-pegged jointed cruck roof truss with a pegged and shaped lap-jointed collar is exposed. Other cruck trusses are plastered over in the rooms towards the front. The remaining beams are mostly boxed in except for one square-section beam, probably secondary. The fireplaces throughout are blocked with 19th and 20th century grates. In the front block, the first floor level was raised around 1930 and the timbers apparently replaced. The roof here is inaccessible and the trusses, possibly A-frames, are boxed into the partitions. The early plaster is laid on water reeds rather than wooden lathes.

The Gardens is an attractive house where modernisation work may uncover interesting early features. Its name derives from its use for many years as a market garden, where the famous King Alfred daffodil was developed in the early 20th century. An old photograph shows a thatch-roofed glasshouse in the grounds.