Listed Building: Bell Farm House (1086145)

TQ 85 SE 4/30 HARRIETSHAM EAST STREET (southwest side) Bell Farm House (Formerly listed as The Old House) 20.10.52. GV I Farmhouse. Circa 1500. Timber framed with plaster infilling and plain tile roof. Wealden; open hall of two unequal bays with storeyed bay to either end. Two storeys. Close-studded, except ground floor of right bay of hall and right end bay which have broadly spaced studding. Right and left end bays jettied, with moulded bressumers. Jetties and moulding continue round side elevations on moulded dragon posts. Moulded fillet across front, along left side and formerly along right, half way up first floor. Close-studded coving to flying wall-plate, springing from fillet. Cross-passage delineated by bracket to coving towards right end of hall. Hipped roof, with gablet to left. Multiple brick ridge stack with fillet, in front slope of roof off-centre to right, and small projecting stack to left end. Irregular fenestration of one small four-light ovolo-moulded mullioned casement with leaded panes to each outer bay. Two storey canted bay, probably the original hall window, to larger, left-hand bay of hall, extending through coving almost to eaves. Ground floor of bay has six-light early C20 casement, first floor filled in and painted to resemble close studding. Hollow-chamfered four-centred arched door head with carved spandrels to right end of hall, with moulded brattished bressumer above. Ribbed door, probably original. Original, blocked, door opening on first floor to rear of left side elevation (possibly for garderobe?). Weatherboarded lean-to to right end. Interior: moulded and brattished screens and dais beams, two 4-centred arched service doors with hollow spandrels and hollow-chamfered jambs, and plain opening to 'service' end stairs. 'Service' stairs original. Moulded central truss posts and tie-beam and moulded octagonal central crown-post. Other crown-posts plain. Original smoke-blackened hall wall to right on first floor. Internal tension braces and rebated corner posts. Unusual survival of original vertical stud, lathe and daub wall concealing coving from inside hall. Hall floor and stack circa 1600. An "unusually sumptuous C16 Wealden house, unusually well preserved, i.e. not restored." (J. Newman: Buildings of England Series, North East and East Kent, 1969). Eric Mercer, English Vernacular Houses, 1975.W. Galsworthy Davie and E. Guy Dawber, Old Cottages and Farmhouses in Kent and Sussex, London 1900 Pl.6. Listing NGR: TQ8713052394