16 Hill Top Fold

This is a farmer yeoman house dating to 1685, with later alterations. It was originally built for Aeneas and Elizabeth Bothomley and incorporates some earlier timberwork. The house is constructed of thinly coursed rubble with quoins, and has a stone slate roof, with the roof of the projecting parlour wing to the left turned through 90 degrees around 1800 to be parallel with the main range.

The building retains its original plan form despite later subdivision. The layout includes a through passage with a lower end to the right and the main house body to the left, featuring a fireplace backing onto the passage. To the left of the house body is a parlour, now divided, and behind that is a slightly later kitchen wing. The doorway to the passage has an arched surround with chamfered edges, and the lintel is inscribed "AE EB 1685". A two-light fire window and a six-light hall window with a king mullion, both double chamfered, are located to the left of the doorway. There are also one four-light and two two-light chamfered windows to the first floor. The windows to the lower end to the right of the doorway have been replaced with windows from another house of a similar date – two four-light and one two-light windows, all double chamfered. The two-light window occupies the site of an earlier doorway leading directly into the lower end chamber. An ogee-headed window at the rear of this end is also a replacement. The windows to the parlour wing are double chamfered: a five-light window to the ground floor and a four-light window to the first floor.

The kitchen wing has one five-light window to each floor, double chamfered to the ground floor and single chamfered to the first floor, the latter having new mullions and lintel. The interior retains much original timberwork, including reed-moulded joists, arched and pegged door frames, and one surviving door with three round arched panels, located between the house body and the parlour. The spine beams in the house body are scarf-jointed at the point where a bressummer would have been and show clear evidence of a fire-hood. This is thought to be the only surviving and intact example of a 17th-century yeoman house in the Colne Valley.

The house was occupied by the Rev Robert Meeke from 1689 to 1724. Relevant documentation includes an inventory of Edmund Bothomley (1668), the will of Edmund Bothomley (1780), and numerous references to the Bothomley family in Slaithwaite Court Rolls.