Listed Building: ABBEY FARMHOUSE (282318)

SOUTH ELMHAM ST. JAMES THE STREET TM 38 SW 4/58 Abbey Farmhouse GV II Former farmhouse. Mid to late C16. 2 storeys. Timber-framed and rendered with C20 concrete plaintiles and decorated ridge tiles. An internal chimney- stack with a short plain rebuilt red brick shaft, and a later end stack, set externally. Various 3-light casement windows with transomes. On the upper rear wall, one 6-light and one smaller 3-light ovolo-moulded mullioned window and one 4-light diamond-mullioned window. Enclosed and gabled C20 porch in colour-washed brick with a half-glazed door. The interior is in 5 bays, with the middle bay completely altered: it now contains a hallway and a C20 stair, but may originally have had a cross-entry, with a chimney-stack, to heat one of the ground-floor rooms, backing on to it. At each side of the house is a 2-bay room with a very fine main beam, ovolo-moulded, with additional fillets along the soffit: on the right, the joists with chamfer and lamb's tongue stops, are also exposed, but on the left 2 sections of reused timber screen, similar, but not identical, in design, with long panels and a middle rail, have been fitted below the main beam to divide the room into 2. There is a marked join in both wallplates above the central hallway area, and the 2 halves of the house may be of slightly different date. Above the left side, the roof has plain queen-posts, with thin arched braces to the arcade plates and collars, set on markedly cambered tie beams supported by heavy arched braces. The upper ceilings are a later insertion here, but in the other half of the house a straight tie beam and joists set flat on the upper floor suggest that this is an original ceiling. The roof above is inaccessible. The house is small but very well framed, with close studding and various types of brace, arched, reversed and partly cranked. Listing NGR: TM3167681090