Myddle House Farmhouse Including Oast House

Myddle House Farmhouse including Oast House

This is a farmhouse, now residential, dating from the late 16th century with a 17th-century rear wing and 18th-century service wings. The building features painted timber framing with painted rendered and brick infill panels on a brick plinth. The roofs are plain tile, and there is a 19th-century brick central ridge chimney built on 16th-century diagonal shafts below the roof pitch. The structure comprises a 3-bay front range with a 3-bay rear cross wing and additional service wings.

The exterior is 2 storeys tall with a cellar and attic. The front range (west-facing) displays herringbone-pattern framing at the first floor with raking studs set between posts. A former jettied bressumer is now underbuilt with rendered masonry at ground level. Two large metal 3-light casements with top-lights occupy each storey, and a central 6-panelled door with upper panels glazed sits between them. A fire insurance mark for the Worcester Fire Office is fixed to the framing.

The left (north) return gable of the front range features square framing 3 panels high at the first floor, jettied over a full-height close-studded ground floor with a double ovolo-chamfered bressumer on 3 scalloped brackets. The first-floor square framing is infilled with raking studs forming a decorative pattern. A rendered former window opening with a double-ovolo-chamfered sill is visible. The gable-end truss has a jettied cambered double ovolo-chamfered tie beam with long raking struts lapped at the head and subsidiary raking struts linking to principals. Double collars frame a boarded opening with an ovolo-chamfered surround, with vertical struts under the collar. Three square panels adjacent to former openings are infilled with carved and curved bracing forming decorative panels. A projecting tiled porch roof to ground level with a brick side wall to the left covers an ovolo-chamfered doorway and a plain boarded door, reputed to have come from Boraston Church after an 18th-century fire.

The right (south) return gable displays herringbone-pattern framing as on the west front at the first floor, jettied over close-studded ground-floor framing. The south gable-end truss is framed similarly to the north gable-end but with mostly brick infill panels.

The rear range's north-side wall shows square framing 4 panels high at the first floor and 3 panels high at the ground floor, partly underbuilt in brick to the right. A long pair of tension braces appears at the first floor. Two 19th-century 2-light casements occupy the first floor, while the ground floor has 3-light, 2-light and 20th-century windows. The opposite (south) side of the rear range is covered with 19th-century brick gabled and lean-to extensions.

The rear wing's gable end features heavily restored 20th-century square framing 2 panels high at the first floor with a jettied first-floor plain chamfered bressumer on brackets on corner posts. The ground floor is underbuilt in brick with a 20th-century casement. A 19th-century segmental-arched cellar opening is visible.

An 18th-century 2-storey painted brick service wing extension extends to the left (south), and a square brick oast house with a slate roof stands at the far left.

Internally, the ground-floor south bay of the front range contains twin bridging beams with ovolo-moulded chamfers and a 17th-century low-relief plastered ceiling with rose, leaf and star motifs and a central dome. The north bay has deep plain chamfered bridging beams. First-floor bays feature ovolo-chamfered bridging beams with moulded plaster cornices; the south bay has a 17th-century low-relief plastered ceiling with moulded leaf, rose and flower motifs. The north bay has a cambered mantle beam with beaded soffit moulding and ovolo-moulded brick support-wall jambs.

The roof structure is a double trenched-purlin roof with straight windbraces in the mid tier. Two internal trusses feature a collar with twin vertical struts and a straight tie beam cut between the struts. The north internal truss has an infilled partition with vestiges of a 17th-century boarded door and hinges.

The rear range's ground and first floors have deep chamfered bridging beams with stepped-ovolo chamfer-stops. A single-purlin roof contains 2 internal trusses of collar and twin lower raking struts interrupting the tie beam, mostly using reused timbers.