Stepney Farm TA933.5

Stepney Farm is ostensibly a large Victorian/ Edwardian House. However at the northern end there is a notably different north-south wing.

This north-south wing is constructed in brick with a tiled roof which is gabled to the north with some iron-framed casement windows. The brick build, proportions, plan, iron casements with window furniture, small stack and ridge board all indicate a build date in the second half of the eighteenth century. However, the roof is constructed almost entirely from randomly re-used sooted medieval rafters turned on edge, with redundant collar halvings and a ridge board. The builder clearly had access to a stock of timber from a pre-1550 building with an open hall (ties, girders and rafters), and this appears to have dictated, to a great extent the size of this building. This portion of the house may represent the cottage depicted on the tithe map of 1840.That cottage was, in turn, associated with an early manorial tenement and it is possible the early timbers have survived from the original dwelling.

These notes have been compiled from survey reports prepared by Dr Annabelle Hughes.
The full reports have been deposited in the Sussex Archaeological Society Library, Barbican House, Lewes, where they can be consulted by researchers.

Tithe Data

Cottage (? cottage lost,
Stepney Farm on site)

1841 Census

Tenement Analysis

Buildings

Archaeology

Old Maps

Further Information