Rowland'S Farm House, And Attached Outbuildings Around Courtyard On North Side, Including Well

Rowland's Farm House and Attached Outbuildings Around Courtyard on North Side, Including Well

This is a farmhouse of late 15th to early 16th century date, remodelled in the late 16th century with minor alterations since. It is built of ham stone, some in ashlar and some roughly cut and squared with ashlar dressings. The roof is covered with double Roman clay tiles between high stepped coped gables which suggest the building formerly had a thatched roof. The ashlar chimney stacks have moulded caps.

The building is arranged in a 'U'-plan with 2 storeys and attics. The south elevation has 5 bays. There is a plinth to all but the last bay and an eaves course. An angled south-west corner buttress and bay buttresses are present. The windows are hollow-chamfered mullioned examples with 4-centre-arched lights and incised spandrels under flat heads with labels. The ashlar bay 1 has 4-light windows at both levels in chamfered recesses with square-stop labels. Bay 2 has a 4-light tall mullioned and transomed window in a hollowed recess, and bay 3 has a matching window at the same height but with a higher cill and no transome. Bay 5 has 4-light windows at both levels, apparently restored in the 20th century. Bay 4 projects as a 2-storey porch with angled corner buttresses and a coped gable. This porch has a 4-light window with a label above and below it is a 4-centre-arched open roll-and wave-moulded archway without a label. Inside the porch are bench seats and a chamfered inner doorway. Blocked single-light windows are present in the returns at first floor level. Dormer windows are set in the roof over bays 2, 3 and 5.

The east elevation, which closes one end of the courtyard, is quite plain. The west main gable has a short return and contains 12-light sash windows of early pattern with thick glazing bars. The south pair of these windows have moulded hoods. The centre window at first floor level is a 2-light rectangular-leaded casement under a hoodmould.

The rear elevation of the main block extends to the satch, with a link wing northwards to bay 1. A small projection, presumably for the stair, contains a simple mezzanine window. Opposite the porch is a 4-centre-arched doorway with a 2-light window and an attic dormer above. To bays 3 and 4 are 4-light windows set at mezzanine level, with heraldic glass. Between them is a proudstanding chimney stack. A slight projection with plain rectangular windows (the upper barred) adjoins this, and in the short return wing are two 2-light mullioned windows and a 4-centre-arched doorway. The west elevation of the closing wing has a simple 2-light window above and a wide boarded door in a heavy frame under a timber lintel below, with a re-set 2-part stairlight and a casement window alongside.

The interior was not examined during the survey, but is reported to follow a cross-passage and hall plan with alterations and additions made mostly before circa 1750. The hall contains a late 16th century timber screen and a chamfered cambered-arched fireplace. The plastered ceiling has sections of a decorated plaster frieze, and above the fireplace, also in plaster, are the arms of Elizabeth I. The inner room has a 6-panel ceiling, each panel originally subdivided into 4 more. The walls are partly rebuilt, apparently before 1750, and the stairway is modern, replacing an earlier stair. The west kitchen has a 4-panel ceiling and nearby an adapted newel staircase.

The link wing at the east end of the courtyard has deep-chamfered heals with step and run-out stops, with a clumsy connection at first floor level. The wing to the north of the courtyard may represent an earlier house. Its south wall, much restored, retains one early timber-framed window and a blocked doorway into the east link wing. The north wall has two more early timber-framed windows. The roof frame of this wing has 4 jointed cruck trusses, some with smoke-blackened timbers. Traces of windbraces survive, including one surviving fragment, and there is also a timber-framed gable end.

The house was restored by Raymond Erith in the mid-1970s.