Popeswell

Popeswell is a house that dates from the late 17th century, with the northern end altered in the 19th century to a single storey in the 20th century. It features a timber frame set on a black plastered plinth, with roughcast walls and a dark weatherboarded southern end, topped by a steep thatched roof. The house is long and originally had a three-cell internal-chimney, lobby-entry plan, which has been extended by one bay to the north and includes rear outshuts. It faces west and has an annular wellhead just outside the front door.

There are four windows on each floor, with a battened door in the middle that has a gabled thatched hood above it. The windows include two-light flush casements, with the upper two on the left and the lower two on the right featuring small-paned cast iron casements. The upper right window has wooden divided casements, while the lower left has steel casements. The northern end has a French window with sidelights leading into a single-volume space that includes an internal gable chimney.

Inside, the house has stepped jowled posts, a clasped-purlin roof, and a face-halved bladed scarf joint in the wallplate. The axial floor beams are chamfered, and the joists are squared. There are back-to-back fireplaces with a plastered conical chimney in a narrow bay on the first floor. The fireplace includes two recesses in the back with rounded corbels at the head and a similarly shaped lower lip. A former southern service room has been incorporated into the middle room, and a single long chamfered axial beam has been added.