This information is taken from the statutory List as it was in 2001 and may not be up to date.
SY 09 SW AYLESBEARE
3/5 Withen Farmhouse - 11.11.52 - II
Farmhouse. Early or mid C16 with major late C16 and C17 improvements; some C18 and C19 refurbishment. Plastered cob walls on rubble footings, parts are repaired with brick; one brick, one cob stack, both topped with C20 brick.
East-facing range apparently adapted from an original 3- or 4-room and through- passage plan. Since the collapse of the service end due to floods in 1973 the through-passage is now at the left (southern) end. The hall has a projecting rear lateral stack and the small inner room has an axial stack. The unheated fourth room beyond at right (northern) end maybe a C17 addition. This room has since been sub- divided. The present main entrance now leads into an entrance lobby made from the inner half of that room. The floor has been removed from the outer half and it has been converted to an agricultural store. The former service end was apparently not in domestic use before its collapse since the former list description describes a barn at that end. Now 2 storeys throughout.
Irregular 5-window front of various late C19 - early C20 casements with glazing bars and includes a 5-light window to the former hall. All 4 first floor windows have thatch eyebrows over. The 3 doors, one to the passage, one to present entrance lobby and third to the agricultural store are all late C19 - early C20 and the present main door has a C20 porch of corrugated plastic with a monopitch roof. The right end front wall (to the store) and much of the first floor front has been rebuilt with brick. The roof is gable-ended and the upper part of the right end wall has been rebuilt with timber framing. The rear has similar C19 casements with glazing bars although the one to rear of the hall contains rectangular panes of leaded glass.
Interior although the interior was modernised and rearranged in the C19 the survival of the early plan and the early features which can be seen suggest that the refurbishment was superficial. The partition on the upper side of the passage is a C16 oak plank-and-muntin screen; its muntins are chamfered with cut diagonal stops and it includes a blocked shoulder-headed doorway. The hall has a late C16 - early C17 axial beam, soffit-chamfered with step stops. The inner room also has an axial beam but it is soffit-chamfered with runout stops, possibly late C17. Both fireplaces are blocked. The fourth room crossbeam and half-beams are soffit- chamfered with scroll stops and are C17. There is a later brick partition under the crossbeam. The roof over the main house is inaccessible and the trusses coincide with the first floor partitions. However the roof can be seen over the agricultural store where there is a side-pegged jointed cruck truss and a hip cruck. The rest of the roof maybe C16 or C17 and it may be smoke-blackened over the hall.
Withen is a little-modernised farmhouse with much of its long structural history hidden by later plaster.
Listing NGR: SY0301490949
This is part of the Series: IOE01/1454 IOE Records taken by Barry F Newbery; within the Collection: IOE01 Images Of England
© Mr Barry F. Newbery. Source: Historic England Archive
This photograph was taken for the Images of England project
Photographer: Newbery, Barry F.
Rights Holder: Newbery, Barry F.
Brick, Cob, Plaster, Rubble, Timber, Medieval Farmhouse, Tudor Domestic, Elizabethan Agricultural Dwelling, Dwelling, House, Agriculture And Subsistence, Farm Building, Agricultural Building, Cross Passage House, Monument (By Form), Cruck House, Timber Framed House, Timber Framed Building, Barn, Storehouse, Unassigned, Building
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