Duncombe Farm Cottage

Dating from around 1600, this is one of the oldest surviving houses in East Horsley.

Duncombe Farm Cottage is a timber-framed farmhouse dating from the late 16th or early 17th Century and is a Grade II listed building. 

According to local historian Pam Bowley, records show the first tenant to live here was a certain Henry Bawldewyn who took over the farm in 1632. As she explains in her book ‘East Horsley: the history of a Surrey village’ there is evidence of an older house being on this site because the northern end of the present house contains timber-framing from a much older building, possibly from the Elizabethan period. 

The present house is a four bay, timber-framed early chimney house with brick in-fill instead of wattle and daub and a half-hipped roof. This building initially served as a farm house, then it was used as a farm labourer’s cottage. In 1916 it was converted into a residential house, which it remains today.  

Pam Bowley also comments that it is rare to find any house in East Horsley dating from such a period since most buildings of that time were either re-built, re-modelled or demolished by Lord Lovelace after he acquired the East Horsley Park estate in 1840. The reason this building survived, it seems, is because his sister-in-law lived here and she rather liked it the way it was!

LOCATION: On the east side of Ockham Road North with entry beside Duncombe House.  Only the upper parts are visible from the public right of way along Ockham Road North.