The Old House is a former farmhouse in Harrietsham

Harrietsham

Harrietsham is a rural village and civil parish in the Maidstone District of Kent, England. According to the United Kingdom Census 2001, it has a population of around 1,504. The parish is located on the slope of the North Downs, east of Maidstone...

, Kent, built around 1500 and described as "unusually well preserved".

The house is a two-storey timber framed structure with a steeply pitched plain tiled hipped roof

Hip roof

A hip roof, or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope. Thus it is a house with no gables or other vertical sides to the roof. A square hip roof is shaped like a pyramid. Hip roofs on the houses could have two triangular side...

. The right and left ends of the front façade and the two end façades are jettied

Jettying

Jettying is a building technique used in medieval timber frame buildings in which an upper floor projects beyond the dimensions of the floor below. This has the advantage of increasing the available space in the building without obstructing the street...

 with moulded

Molding (decorative)

Molding or moulding is a strip of material with various profiles used to cover transitions between surfaces or for decoration. It is traditionally made from solid milled wood or plaster but may be made from plastic or reformed wood...

 bressumer beams carrying the load of the upper floor. Windows of various sizes and dates provide illumination to the interior. Internally, the roof structure is formed of tie beams and crown posts

King post

A king post is a central vertical supporting post used in architectural, bridge, or aircraft design applications.-Architecture:...

, one of which is octagonal with mouldings. The stairs are original and the hall wall shows smoke blackening from the time before the construction of the chimney when open hearths and roof apertures were used in this type of building.

The house is a Grade I listed building.