Walking to Bower Farmhouse from The King’s Head — 4.6-Mile Circular via Mersham

TR 03 NE MERSHAM BOWER ROAD (north side) 7/91 Bower Farmhouse 27.11.57 II* House. Circa 1500, altered C16-C18. Timber framed and clad with red and blue brick, and rendered with tile hanging on 1st floor to front elevation. Extended with red and blue brick (in part English bond) with tile hung outshots. Plain tiled roof. Hall house with cross wing passage in origin. Two storeys on ragstone plinth with hipped roof and gablets. Stack to rear centre, with 4 truncated octagonal shafts (original 6 tall ornamented chimney shafts, removed mid C20). Two tripartite sash with central sash with vertical glazing bars on 1st floor, and sash and 2 metal casements on ground floor with hipped porch to centre right, with glazed outer door and half-glazed inner door. Left return English bond brick with truncated external stack. Hipped rear wing with catslide outshots. Interior: evidence of close- studded exterior walls survives. End right bay rebuilt C18 with much re-used timber. Brattished and coved dais beam with very low and wide four centred arched door with hollow chamfered jambs. (Moulded bargeboard preserved inside end room). Rear rooms (C17 extension) with chamfered beams, wave moulded ship-lap doors, and kitchen inglenook with round bread oven projecting into room. Main chamber/hall with ovolo moulded cross-beamed ceiling with tongue stops with 9 panelled studded doors in stop-chamfered and moulded doorways (all C16/C17 work). Open well stair with moulded rails and poppy-head finials to newels (plaster panel baluster). Upper rooms with fine multi-panelled doors in moulded surrounds, coved chimney overmantel. Close-studded rear walls with mid-rail lean-to and clasped purlin roofs to rear range. Main range with crown-post roof, the hall with half octagonal end posts, and full central post about 5 feet high, smoke-blackened, on massive hollow chamfered knee-braced tie beams. Listing NGR: TR0565439388