Stone Farm, Newington, Kent (16th century)

Stone Farm is a sixteenth century Grade II listed building that retains many of the characteristics of a medieval house (a cross passage, intercommunicating rooms and unglazed windows) yet was built with a first floor extending throughout the building. It is in many ways a transitional building, one that had abandoned the open hall of its predecessors but not yet fully embraced the advantages that could be had by this change.

Only the upper floor of Stone Farm is timber-framed. The ground floor comprises rubble walling laid using local Kentish ragstone. A butt side-purlin roof had replaced the original clasped side-purlin roof however fragments of the original arrangement survived fossilised within the later roof space. It is not clear whether the building was heated at first; no evidence for an original chimney stack could be seen. The extant stack at the west end of the building is clearly a later insertion (windows were revealed behind this feature during dismantling).

A survey of Stone Farm was undertaken prior to its being dismantled and removed to a new site for reconstruction. The building lay in the path of the Channel Tunnel works.

More information can be found in CAT's Annual Report 1987–88

Stone Farm: Reconstructed perspective view.

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