Cooks Hole Farmhouse

Cooks Hole Farmhouse

A farmhouse of 17th and 18th-century date, extended with minor alterations in the 19th century. The building stands as a remote farm south-west of Thornhaugh village and appears to have been the only isolated farmstead in the parish at the time of the 1838 Tithe map.

The house is built from local limestone rubble with ashlar dressings and Collyweston slate roofs, with a brick stack to the east gable end. It comprises a long rectangular main range of one-and-a-half storeys with wings to the north and south. The north wing is at the west end of the range, while the south wing is positioned to the centre. Single-storey outhouses are attached to the south gable end, and in the angle between the north wing and main range is a small single-storey lean-to with a catslice roof. The main range has a large central stack and chimneys at either end, with another chimney above the south wing gable.

The walls are predominantly coursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, and the roofline of both north and south wings is slightly lower than that of the main range. The dip and wobble of the rooflines suggest that the roofs have no ridge pieces and that the roof trusses probably retain much of their original material. Ground-floor windows are casements under wooden lintels, whilst the main range has tile-hung dormer windows in the south slope of the roof; the south wing has a single similar window to either side.

A small 19th-century addition is attached to the west gable end with a slightly lower Collyweston slate roof and more regular wall construction of dressed limestone. Its south elevation has one casement window to ground and first-floor levels respectively, and an entrance set against the gable end of the earlier house. This now appears to be the main entrance, though a blocked entrance exists in the east end of the south elevation, with vestigial evidence of further entrances in the south wing.

The farmhouse appears originally to have been built as a single dwelling, perhaps as a single or double cell house, later enlarged by the addition of north and south wings. The 19th century saw a change in its fortune, with evidence of conversion to multiple occupancy. The 1900 Ordnance Survey map indicates three dwellings, a decline from single occupancy confirmed by an increase in the number of chimney stacks and entrances. The east end has a brick stack attached to the gable end and a blocked door in the south elevation. The 19th-century extension has its own stack and separate entrance. The entrance to the central section may have been through a blocked door in the east wall of the south wing. A small chimney was inserted at some point in the angle between the north wing and the 19th-century addition, serving a corner fireplace in the north wing which was previously unheated.

The Bedford Estate maps of 1838 and 1871 show that the 19th-century addition was not present in 1838 but had been built by 1871. Otherwise the 1838 map shows the house to have the same plan as it does today, including the outbuildings to the south wing. The farmhouse is designated for its vernacular construction in local materials according to local custom and tradition, the substantial intactness of its external fabric, its historical interest for its date and surviving evidence of change and alteration over time, its significant component in the historic rural landscape, and its rarity as a substantially unmodernised house of this date.