Parsonage Farm, North Elham

Image: © John Baker Taken: 3 Feb 2012

Parsonage Farm was owned by Merton College, Oxford, from 1270 until sold to the Palmer family in 1957. From the front it appears to be a simple 18th-century house but the upper floor at the rear is 16th-century and timber-framed and has an overhang over a very curious undercroft. The walls are of chalk block, about two feet thick, with stone quoins and narrow slit windows, which are blocked on the outside; there is a round headed doorway in the west wall. The undercroft once had a barrel vaulted ceiling, but this was sliced away to take the Tudor joists above. All this indicates that it was the undercroft of a Norman house perhaps as early at the 12th-century.

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