Steep Farmhouse

Steep Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from around the 16th century, with parts demolished and extended in the 17th and 18th centuries. It features a timber frame faced in Flemish bond brick, with extensions in English or English garden wall bond and flint, accented by brick dressings. The roofs are covered with clay plain tiles and have gabled and half-hipped ends, while a brick axial stack with square shafts is present.

The layout consists of a long four-room plan with a cross-wing at the right-hand end. An axial stack is located between the cross-wing and the main range, with back-to-back fireplaces, a porch at the front angle, and an outshut at the back. The remaining three right-hand roof bays of the main range are all that is left of the original timber-framed house, which was partly demolished when an additional four bays (two rooms) were added to the left end in brick around the mid-17th century. A cross-wing was likely built at the right-hand end later in the 17th century.

The exterior is two storeys high with a long six-window north front. It features a gabled flint cross-wing to the right and a gabled two-storey flint porch in the tile angle. The windows are wooden-framed with iron casements and leaded panes, some having cambered brick arches. There is a small ovolo-moulded stone mullion two-light window on the ground floor to the left, and a doorway near the centre with a plank door and gabled wooden canopy. At the rear, the main range roof extends over the outshut to lower eaves, and there are four gabled dormers.

Inside, there are chamfered ceiling beams and exposed joists, with fireplaces that have replaced bressumers. The original part of the main range has a three-bay roof with smoke-blacked purlins and common-rafter couples, alongside a timber-framed gable-end with a diamond-mullion window now located inside the roof. To the left, staggered tenoned (butt) purlins are built against it. The cross-wing at the right end features a four-bay tenoned purlin roof augmented with struts.