Building record 1539200000 - Snowhill Farm, Chesham Road

The farmhouse has clearly undergone a number of buildings phases. It is a single pile house orientated so that its gable end faces the road. The main range is two storeys with an attic. Directly to the rear and in-line is a lower range with a cat slide roof to the south elevation. Attached on the west elevation of this lower range is an outshut and external chimney stack. Behind this lower range and visible from the road is a two storey addition which stands proud of the single pile range. All the building phases have old tile roofs with brick elevations. The 2014 sale particulars reveal that the interiors hold evidence of timber framing. This is particularly evident in the lower cat slide range. The shared wall between the two single pile ranges has box framing at first floor level which is suggestive of a seventeenth century origin and indicates that this was the outside wall of that particular building phase. The exterior wall reveals a collar beam with straight bracing suggesting that the timber framing is not particularly early but could well be seventeenth century. It also reveals that this wall was not external and that this early building phase originally extended further west.
The sale particular interior photographs of the main range show a spine beam in the centre of the house at ground floor level and at first floor level, the front bedroom overlooking the road has an exposed spine beam and joists. No wall timbers can be seen. The building phase that is separate to the single pile is described in the particulars as having “beamed ceilings and walls”. Externally the fenestration of the main range is irregular and somewhat ad hoc which suggests that the origins of the building are likely to be older than the brickwork might suggest for example on the north face there is a tiny window at the junction of the two single pile ranges. The windows themselves appear to date from the nineteenth or twentieth centuries.
The main range has a central chimney stack but no evidence from examining the plans of a central plan form apart from the room directly to the east overlooking the road. The front door is modest, almost accidental and is sited off centre and internally there is a central staircase with narrow spaces either side which is probably a more recent insertion.
The above description confirms that Snowhill Farm is of architectural interest. Of greatest significance is the survival of a seventeenth century structure although now truncated, from which the rest of the farmhouse appears to have evolved. The main range does not have the appearance of a new built eighteenth or nineteenth century farmhouse but instead also appears to have earlier origins. It has been refaced in brick probably in the nineteenth century as the bricks appear to be large and regular. The extension which abuts the single pile range is an unknowable quantity, at first glance it appears to be a nineteenth century addition but the sale particulars describe timber framing internally and based on this, one would have to date it earlier unless it was a consciously archaic form of decoration to compliment the rest of the farmhouse (B1).
Aerial photos and Google Streetview show lower western bay raised and extended to connect farmhouse with barn in 2018-2019, along with other renovation works.