Lower House Farmhouse

Farmhouse. It may date from the 16th or 17th century, with significant alterations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The construction is of thick-walled rubble with brick dressings, topped with a slate roof. A brick stack is located to the left of the centre of the building. The farmhouse consists of a two-room central range with a lobby entry to the left, a two-room cross-wing to the left of the chimney, and a shallower, wider cross-wing to the right. The cross-wings are two stories high, while the central range has one story and an attic. There are four windows: a 2-light casement window to the left side of the left cross-wing, two 3-light casements from the late 19th or early 20th century to the right of the entrance, a 2-light casement in the left gable at first floor level, and two early 20th-century casements in brick-slate-roofed gabled dormers on the centre range. A small, 2-light window is located under a label on the right-hand gable. The entrances are via an early 20th-century ledged door under a slate-gabled canopy to the left side of the central range, and via high, double-ledged doors to the right cross-wing, which is protected by a segmental-headed brick arch. Inside, there are flagged floors and stop-chamfered beams to the two principal rooms: the one to the front of the left cross-wing and the one to the right of the chimney in the central range. Heavy, closely-set ceiling joists are also present. A framed oak window with two diamond-section mullions and internal 18th-century hinged shutters is in the left wall of the rear ground floor room of the left cross-wing; a similar window, but with four mullions, is in the rear wall of the same room. The principal room to the right of the chimney has a rear window composed of two rows of four small lights, divided by deeply chamfered mullions and a transom, with evidence of the removal of thin diamond-section subsidiary mullions from each light. An 18th-century ledged door behind the chimney leads to a rear-lit winding newel stair with oak treads. A blocked 5-light untransomed diamond-section mullioned oak window, retaining its intervening small diamond-section mullions, is in the rear wall of the right cross-wing. The roof of the left wing has single raking struts to each truss; the purlins are set on edge to the front and flat to the rear. There is an interrupted tie-beam truss around the chimney stack on the first floor. Despite alterations to the front of the building in the last century, a remarkable amount of original detail remains, and the major roof spaces have not been inspected.