Broadlands

Broadlands is a small farmhouse dating from the early to mid-16th century, with significant alterations in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a major refurbishment in the late 17th century, and modernisations in the late 19th century and around 1980. The house is constructed of plastered local 17th-century brick, with some earlier plastered cob, stone rubble, and brick stacks, with substantial repairs to the chimneyshafts. It has a thatched roof.

The original plan comprised a 3-room-and-through-passage layout on level ground, facing north. The parlour, situated at the east end, has a gable-end stack. Adjoining it is the passage, leading to a large central kitchen. An axial stack backs onto the unheated room to the west, which was originally a dairy or buttery, potentially a secondary addition and largely rebuilt in the 19th century. The rest of the house largely reflects the late 17th-century refurbishment, though incorporating earlier features.

The exterior presents a regular, though unsymmetrical, 4-window front featuring 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars. The central two first-floor windows retain late 17th-century oak frames and are 3-light, with chamfered mullions. The central and right ground-floor windows also retain late 17th-century oak frames, but are missing their mullions; the central window has a low segmental arch above. A 20th-century door is located in a matching porch to the right of the centre, with a monopitch shingled roof. The main roof is gable-ended.

Inside, the dairy end features plain 19th-century carpentry. The kitchen has a large stone-rubble fireplace with a chamfered and scroll-stopped oak lintel. A chamfered axial beam with scroll stops is present, however the west (passage) end has been removed to accommodate a 20th-century staircase. Originally, the kitchen and passage were separated by an oak plank-and-muntin screen, which was removed during the circa 1980 modernisation. A surviving oak plank-and-muntin screen remains on the parlour side of the passage, featuring contemporary painted decoration of intersecting lines around bunches of flowers. The parlour fireplace is late 17th-century, with plastered brick, a curving pent, and a chamfered and scroll-stopped oak lintel; the stops to the crossbeam have been removed.

A section of the early to mid-16th-century roof structure remains, supported by two side-pegged jointed cruck trusses. These trusses, along with the purlins, common rafters and battens, are blackened by smoke from the original open hearth fire. During the late 17th-century refurbishment, these cruck trusses were left standing while the original walls were demolished and replaced with new brick walls. Late 17th-century A-frame trusses are located at each end of this earlier roof section.