Farmhouse At Home Farm

CONDOVER

1056/0/10008 Farmhouse at Home Farm 18-NOV-03

II Farmhouse. Early-C16 with alterations through the C20. Brick and framed walls, now rendered; timber roof construction including crucks, with tile pitched roof. 3-bay house with entrance between former dairy end to right and 2 bays to left. EXTERIOR: C20 3-light windows to each storey with C20 gabled porch over entrance, end chimneys and chimney to left of entrance. INTERIOR: Ground floor has 3 rooms. Entrance to passage with wall formed of large sandstone blocks that support the open fireplace facing central room. Open fireplace has wide and heavy segmentally arched bressumer supported on large chamfered blocks to each side, some C20 stonework to rear. Two chamfered ceiling beams run width of house, with similar from front to rear, these are stopped at both ends and to left of fireplace a chamfered post with stops to the bottom, matched at the top on the inside where the beam meets the bressumer, and to the outside where it continues beyond the post; joists with stops throughout the ceiling. In the left end room, the two chamfered beams continue, with stops at the partition but not to the outside wall; joists in here are without stops. Small area of exposed wattle and daub in this partition wall, and visible base of crucks continuing down to floor level. Right end room, formerly used as dairy, has central beam and segmentally arched bressumer to end wall. Staircase to rear of central bay is C20. First floor has wide plank floorboards and 2 pairs of exposed cruck blades. These pegged collars in situ with pairs of redundant peg holes below. Above ceiling level, the crucks have been truncated above the trenched purlins, to accommodate the change in pitch for the C19 roof structure that is of light scantling rafters with a ridge piece. HISTORY: C19 brick farm buildings for the farm complex to the east. This house is not recorded in the catalogue of surviving cruck buildings in Condover (Alcock), and the C20 exterior belies the interior interest. SOURCES: Alcock, N.W. Cruck Construction: An Introduction and catalogue. CBA Research Report No.42, 1981. Moran, Madge. Vernacular Buildings of Shropshire. Logaston Press, 2003.