Building record 1249700000 - LITTLELANDS

Grade II. Early C17 and 1687 with later additions. Red brick with floorbands. Old tile roof, two storeys and attic. North west block is early C17, timber framed with C18 brick casing. South-east wing dated 1687 in black bricks on gable, 2 windows to each floor, left-hand ones blocked, right-hand double-hung sashes. Cambered brick arches. Small 2-light attic casement. Large offset stack on right flank. Gabled 2-storey porch with 6-panel door and bricked rear hood, 2-light casement over modern dormer on right. Interior: timber framing visible in early C17 part (B1).
Littlelands is a farm set up on cleared woodland c.1630. The oldest part of the house is represented by the two southern bays of the east-west range, 1 1/2 storeys and originally only 19' 3" (3.12 m) to the eaves. The upper floor was within living memory reached by a ladder in the northern bay. Only the south bay was heated (by a gable-end stack), but there was once a third bay, and this too had a hearth. The will of the first owner, Thomas Eeles, provided that his widow was to have 'all that bay of howsing adjoininge to my dwelling howse', and a sufficient load of wood each year. This clearly implies a third bay; moreover the occupant in the early 1660s, Thomas Dibberell, was taxed on two hearths. Probably the third bay lay to the north, where there is now late seventeenth and nineteenth-century work.
The bearer in the southern bay is a re-used wall-plate, with rafter housings on one side and mortices for close studding on the other. The lower part of the stack is of brick and flint, the bricks resembling those in the early stack at Stock Place. They are laid in English bond. Here is more salvage from the Manor House. The wing projecting east from the south end of the house was added in 1687, and the south stack was remodelled at the same time. [Social and economic history of building] (B2).
Negative watching brief (B3).