Ployters Farmhouse

TL 51 SW MATCHING MATCHING TYE Ployters Farmhouse 3/52 14.9.77 GV II

Farmhouse, C16, altered in C17 and C19, extended 1977. Timber framed, plastered, roofed with handmade red clay tiles. Aligned NW-SE, aspect NE, with storeyed service end at the SE, twin rooms on the ground floor and a single room over. 2-bay parlour/solar crosswing at the NW. Storeyed hall block between with axial chimney stack at the SE end facing NW, forming a 'low end' lobby-entrance. Internal chimney stack in crosswing, C19. Extension to S, 1977. 2 storeys. Door and 3 casement windows, all C20, and 3 similar windows above. Gablet roof at each end. Framing partly exposed internally. Jowled wallposts, curved tension bracing trenched to the inside of the studs. The service end and hall block were originally of one storey with attics, the upper rooms lit by unglazed windows at floor level. The walls were raised by approx. 1 metre in the late C17 and the roof rebuilt in its present form, butt-purlin construction, on the same alignment as the original roof over the SE and middle sections, but at right-angles to the original roof of the crosswing. The SE service end and the hall block are structurally distinct, indicating a building programme of phased renewal. There is some evidence that the hall block originally had a timber framed chimney at the SE end, replaced in the late C16 by the present brick chimney stack. The NW crosswing was built in the mid-C16 with a cranked central tiebeam and arched braces to it, still in situ, crownpost roof now replaced. Rafter seatings for the original NE-SW roof are visible on the wallplates. There is an unglazed window in the upper SW wall, with 2 of the 3 original diamond mullions still present, and mortices for another in the NW wall. There has been much reconstruction in brick in the lower SW wall. The house was divided into cottages in the early C19, with insertion of stairs, partitions and NW chimney, and was re-combined to form one house in the C20, with removal of some of these features. An unusual feature of exceptional interest is that the rebates for the twin doors to the service rooms, pantry and dairy, are cut to a height of only 1.27 metres, indicating that they were for half-doors, high enough to exclude children and dogs, but open above, perhaps to facilitate supervision.

Listing NGR: TL5154111170