THE future of a farmhouse that was home to Britain's first female portrait painter is to be decided at a public inquiry next month.

The 17th century Allbrook Farmhouse at Allbrook Hill, near Eastleigh, was once the home of pioneering artist Mary Beale.

For more than eight years the farmhouse has stood boarded up on land owned by property developers Forelle Estates.

Eastleigh Council has kicked out plans to build executive-style homes around the farmhouse.

Forelle Estates had applied for planning permission to refurbish and alter the listed farmhouse and to build eight homes, with car ports, parking, cycle and bin storage plus landscaping, a new access drive from Pitmore Road and parking spaces for public use.

Now the developers are appealing against the council's decision to refuse permission. The Secretary of State has appointed an inspector for the hearing at Eastleigh Civic Offices on February 5, starting at 10am.

The Mary Beale Allbrook Farm Trust, which has launched a global petition, via the Internet, to save the ancient farmhouse, will be represented at the inquiry.

Trust chiefs say that apart from being a striking and increasingly rare example of Hampshire architecture, Allbrook Farmhouse is unique as being the only artist's studio from the 17th century surviving in Britain.

The house was probably built in the 1650s and was the home and studio of Mary Beale. It was there that she honed her craft while her husband prepared her painting materials and ran their smallholding.

A spokesperson for the trust said: "There are few buildings of such importance to the nation's artistic and cultural heritage. The miraculous survival of one of the locations at which Beale worked and lived should be celebrated and the building and its land vigorously protected."