Bockmer House

Bockmer House is likely a 17th-century house that has been altered in the late 18th to 20th centuries, with a significantly rebuilt 16th to 17th-century north wing. It may incorporate materials from an even earlier 16th-century house. The main block is constructed of flint with brick dressings, featuring a hipped old tile roof and brick chimneys. It is a double pile building, two storeys high with three bays. The west front displays a flush band of narrow brick at first floor sill level and offset eaves. It has 3-light leaded casements, renewed in the 20th century; the ground floor windows have cambered heads. A central flush-panelled door is set within a 20th-century half-timbered gabled porch, framed by a wooden architrave. A small, curved projection to the left may have once been an oven. A rebuilt flint and brick wing, with 20th-century plastic casements, connects the main block to a gabled projecting cross wing to the left, which has been extensively rebuilt in brick and partially converted to garages, with some traces of timbering remaining. A car-port with a gabled roof projects in front. The east front presents moulded wooden eaves and three cross windows with gauged brick heads and 20th-century leaded glazing to the first floor. The ground floor features two 20th-century semi-octagonal bay windows with leaded lights, and a central 6-panelled door with a leaded rectangular fanlight and an elaborate 20th-century wooden doorcase, which has pilasters with carved floral ornament, strapwork architrave, a pulvinated frieze carved with fruit and flowers, and a tiled hood. A flint, brick, and chalk garden wall projects to the right, with renewed offset brick coping. The south front was rebuilt in the 18th or early 19th century using a chequered brick pattern, with altered 20th-century fenestration. Inside, two ground floor rooms at the south end retain reused 16th to 17th-century panelling; the southeast room also has a heraldic shield of Samuel Backhouse above the fireplace. Bockmer is recorded as the home of Henry Pole, Lord Montagu, a relative of Cardinal Pole, in 1538, and was later occupied by the Borlase family.