Local Buildings

North Waltham has an attractive mixture of medieval and Victorian buildings, interspersed with 1960/70s replacement or infill houses.  Centred on the pond, the older houses line narrow lanes, with small estates set around its edges.

Batchelors* is the most significant house in the village, having retained much of its integrity as a farmhouse since it was built in 1500.  Graced with interior jettying, this hall house has most of its original timbers exposed.  While a fourth bay has gone from the south side, another has been added to the north (road) end, probably in 1708 when the dated chimney was added.   Sooted rafters and battens predate this, and herringbone and other brick infilling come later.

Across the pond, artificially maintained above the water table 20 meters below, is the picturesque Old Post House*.  Probably late 17c – 1697 was found inscribed in the plaster during renovations and some tie-beams and purlins clearly predate its ‘derelict’ state in 1839 – this was the village shop, housing the post office from 1959-1987, though its brick-arched cellar suggests an earlier use as a public house.   The attached cottage behind, more squat so perhaps older, is tiled as befits a former bakery.

Blake Cottage* next door is an early 17c, three-bay, T-shaped house with a 19c addition on the east side.  Heavily beamed inside, this yeoman’s house was decorated with two-tone Flemish bond bricks in 1695 when the chimney was added.  Small windows from this period survive, even with original catches.  The Reading Room on the east corner has been replaced by an ugly concrete garage.

Grayshott* lies back and above its neighbours.  A substantial house, remodelled in brick-and-flint in the early 1800s, its interior timbers suggest an 18c origin, though the recently incorporated barn could well be medieval. 

Quaint Dove Cottage and its larger neighbour Box Cottage, once a row of labourers’ homes, look out over the site of the glebe farm, of which only the buried foundations and one flint wall remain.  The old rectory was replaced with a much grander one – Boundary House – in those wealthy 1830s, the farm buildings disappearing when St Michael’s Close was built in the 1960s.  Remnants of the 19c cast iron railings survive, but only just.

Thatchings* reflects the alterations and extensions that typically occurred to buildings between the 17c and 19c.  On the Green opposite, the Old Forge is a late 19c shed, connected to the mid 19c blacksmith’s which stood further east, nearer the bus shelter erected to mark QE II’s coronation. Two terraces of three cottages, one in brick-and-flint, the other all brick, complete our circuit round the village heart.  Now enlarged and updated, these were impressive workers’ houses 200 years ago.

Up Popham Lane, the early 19c Cuckoo Bushes once housed the post office and its older cellar the local lock-up, while higher still, Kyte Abbey, a 3 or 4 bay lobby house, has recovered from its decay into 4 workers’ cottages to become grand again.

The Legion Hall has been gone 15 years, but the Fox has taken over its brick-and-flint terrace.  Out on the parish boundary, the 19c woodcutters’ cottages of Woodside have been much enlarged.

Left from Hall House leads us past 19c Portland Place, with views of the medieval backs of Flowerpots, to The Wheatsheaf*.  Converted to the Georgian style, like Flowerpots* its guesthouse, this was a coaching inn en route to Winchester and the south coast.

If the Roman road is old, Popham Lane leading back past the pond and into Overton Road is older being Bronze Age.  It takes us past the church, which stands above the dry valley leading down to Steventon and the River Test.  After being allowed to collapse, St Michael’s* was rebuilt in 1865 using the Norman arcade and some original windows, so exhibiting all features of the Gothic Transition.

Across the valley is Manor Farm, one of two early Victorian brick farmhouses which, with the rectory, served the village grandees. Further along the ancient lane, Folly Farm seems to have old roots, but not so old as the Romano-British farm over towards the Steventon boundary.

Close by the church is Church Cottage, a late timber-framed house linked to the manor farm.  Opposite is the school*, its hall a magnificent example of Victorian Gothic.  Built in 1873, an early board school serving all ages until the 1950s, the headteacher’s house is now school offices and the hall with its fine interior timber decorations used more for social and sport than for classroom teaching.

The school stands on the site of the former manor house, evidenced only by the yew trees screening the Pavilion.  Cuckoo Meadow, the village recreation ground, was given to the village in 1953 by William Rathbone, who owned most of the farmland and tied cottages from 1946-53.  One of these was Church Farm, next to the meadow, the village’s only example of Georgian elegance, now much enlarged to incorporate the old dairy.

Corndell, the third open space, marks the NW corner of the village and had one of three public wells at its SE corner.  The Old School House, though little more than a shed then, served the village children for more than 40 years to 1873. 

Leading north from the pond, Yew Tree Lane passes converted labourers’ cottages on the left before being constricted by Camellia Cottage*.  This attractive two-bay house from late 16c retains some original features including a medieval window on the east side.  Next door is the much grander Walnut Cottage*, an imposing lobby house with a 17c wing on its south side.  Though no longer thatched, the fine exposed timbers mark this as a prestigious house.  Opposite are Yew Tree Cottage* with its 1854 date and the low slung Rose Cottage*.  Its steeply pitched roof sweeping down to ground floor level, this is clearly North Waltham’s oldest house.  A cruck house of two bays, somewhat enlarged, it dates from mid 15c.

At the junction with Chapel Lane, Hook and Hatchet* is an attractive brick-and-flint house dated 1822.  Formerly an ale-house, it must have been built on an earlier site, for Up Street* behind has lost its south bay.  Contemporary with Batchelors, this modest thatched cottage was once a grand three-bay half-timbered house, with an integral smoke bay, though that can’t have been designed too well for, like Batchelors, the rafters and battens are sooted, soot that’s 300 years old if the chimney was inserted around 1700 like others in the village.

Opposite is the derelict North Waltham Farm, sad because this twin of Manor Farm was William Rathbone’s fine home.  Screened from Up Street by mature trees, the house enjoys great views south over its farmland down to the Wheatsheaf and the Downs beyond.  On the roadside stand the old farmhouse in brick-and-flint and North Waltham’s last timber barn, with rather less exciting brick buildings making up the rest of the courtyard.

Maidenthorne Lane once wound through the farmyard – the old barn opposite was dismantled in 1988 – past Townsend, rebuilt over old foundations in the 1960s when Maidenthorne Cottage was hugely expanded.  The grain dryers opposite have gone for mixed modern housing.

The old cottages along Chapel Street have gone, condemned and demolished, their inhabitants rehoused in Coldharbour before and after WWII, and later Cuckoo Close.

Chalk Cottage* survives, our sole example of cob walls and long straw thatch, on the 18c east side at least.  The Methodist Chapel, recently closed, dates from 1864, just before the minister’s house behind, an attractive brick-and-flint house.  The road narrows between the larger, part-timbered Holly Cottage and Mary Lane Cottage opposite, continuing past small cul-de-sacs of large 1970s houses.

* Grade II listed
c Richard Tanner, 2 Oct 03