Summary

Lark Hill Farm is a c1600 lobby-entrance plan house with C19 alterations and extension, and a detached C19 bake house.

Description

MATERIALS: The building is timber-framed and faced in random ragstone with red brick quoins and window dressings. The roof is covered in peg tiles and the stacks are red brick.

PLAN: The front, south-facing, range is the earliest part of the building and has a typical lobby-entrance plan with a massive central chimneystack and chambers to the north and south. The roof is hipped to the south and half-hipped to the north. To the east is a parallel C19 range with three hipped roofs at right angles to the principal roof.

EXTERIOR: The building has two storeys and is four bays wide. The windows to the front are timber-mullioned casements, with those at ground floor having segmentally-arched heads. Elsewhere the windows are generally timber casements or six-over-six sliding sashes.

INTERIOR: Many elements of the building's timber frame are in evidence, including the original exterior rear wall, now internalised, which sits on a ragstone rubble plinth. A stair remains in the original position (to the east of the stack), although it is no longer in use as the well is boarded over at first floor. In the ground floor room to the south of the stack, the chamfered spine beam with ogee stops is exposed, as are the ceiling joists (also chamfered and stopped), and the wide inglenook fireplace with timber lintel is fully open. There are two flights of stairs in use, both C19 additions. One is at the north end of the original house, the other to the south, within the later C19 phase.

Throughout the earlier part of the building there are fixtures, fittings and features which appear to be original to the building. These include timber mullions in internalised windows, plank doors and a sliding timber window shutter. However, the building underwent a sensitive program of repair and alteration in the early C21, and this resulted in some previously lost elements of the building's fabric being recreated.

To the rear of the building is a C19 bake house. This retains a copper for boiling water, and pair of bread ovens.

History

Lark Hill Farm is a c1600 house with a lobby-entrance plan. This type of plan developed in the late C16 and remained common into the C18. By the early C19 timber-framed buildings were considered old-fashioned and unfashionable. They were frequently re-fronted so as to appear of solid masonry construction, and farmhouses were often subdivided and relegated to workers' cottages. Lark Hill Farm appears to have been re-fronted in the early C19 and divided into four cottages. This subdivision remained until the end of the C20, when it was returned to occupation as a single dwelling.

Reasons for Listing

Lark Hill Farm, a c1600 lobby-entrance plan house with C19 alterations, extension, and detached bake house, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Historic interest: the building reflects a typical vernacular plan-form of the late-C16, C17 and C18, and the tendency toward the 'modernisation' and subdivision of timber-framed buildings in the C19
* Architectural interest: the building retains a significant and legible proportion of original fabric and plan form, as well as C19 fabric which includes the bake house: of interest for the unusual survival of a copper and pair of ovens.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26644494

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair
• 
  Sussex: West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)