Cross Ash Farmhouse

A large farmhouse with an unusual and striking facade, probably designed by Thomas Wakeman. Built of coursed rubble with a slate roof, fishscaled on the front slope. The main range is rectangular on a NE-SW axis, facing NW, and there is a service wing attached to the rear of the NE end. The front is long and 2-storeyed in a symmetrical composition of which the striking feature is a pair of large projecting gabled bays flanking a recessed central doorway. These are designed in a Tudor style quirkily translating some characteristics of timber-framed building into stone: at ground floor each has squared corner pilasters with Norman-style cushion capitals, and a mullioned window with a hoodmould and 3 round-headed lights with small-paned glazing; and the upper floor is slightly jettied with stone corbels mimicking the ends of joists, and has a prominent canted oriel window with transomed Tudor-arched lights, the mullions at the angles carried up as small "battlements" to the parapet. All these windows are now painted white. In each gable is a small loop-light, and the verges of the roof oversail. The narrow space between the gabled bays is spanned by a fancifully-fretted fascia to a flat roof protecting the inner doorway, which is Tudor-arched. The outer bays are blind. On the roof ridge to left and right of the gable roofs are chimney stacks each with 4 clustered shafts, the front ones diagonal and the others square. The rear wall, which appears to be older than the front, is 3-storeyed and has various small segmental-headed windows very irregularly disposed, all with altered glazing; a tall and narrow round-headed stairwindow in the centre; and 2 very small square windows immediately beneath the eaves of the SW, with wooden surrounds, saddle bars and apparently unglazed. There is a small modern lean-to attached to the rear of the SW end. The service wing attached to the rear of the NE end, a 4-window range of 2 lower storeys, has a lean-to verandah covering two-thirds of its ground floor level, and windows with altered glazing, those on the upper floor oblong with segmental heads, regularly disposed.

The interior was not inspected.at the time of re-survey (February 2000), but the occupier reported that it contains old beams.