Penhale Farmhouse

Penhale Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the early 19th century, constructed from local stone rubble. The roof is rag slate, cement-washed, with a half-hipped end to the right and a hipped continuation over the former outbuilding. Rebuilt red brick chimney stacks rise from the ends. The house is based on a double-depth rectangular plan, comprising two principal front rooms: a parlour to the right, with heating from an end stack, and a larger kitchen-hall to the left, with direct entry from the central doorway. The integral rear outshot includes a dairy behind the parlour, a small stair hall at the centre opposite the front door, and a lobby behind the kitchen leading to a back doorway and another doorway into the integral outbuilding which runs the full depth of the house and has a loft above. The kitchen fireplace features ovens that back onto the outbuilding. The outbuilding has been converted into a kitchen, and the dairy into a bathroom. A small 20th-century outshot has been added to the back of the rear lobby.

The house is two storeys high and presents an almost symmetrical two-window facade. There are early 19th-century two-light casement windows, six panes per light, with missing glazing bars on the first floor left-hand window. The ground floor left window, originally belonging to the kitchen-hall, is an early 19th-century three-light casement with three panes per light. A central doorway has an early 19th-century four-panel door and a stone rubble open-fronted gabled porch with a slate roof. All windows have wooden lintels. The lean-to outbuilding on the left, now a kitchen, has a large 20th-century window on the ground floor and a small window above. At the rear are a 19th-century two-light six-pane stair casement window centrally, a 20th-century window in the original opening to the dairy to the left, and a doorway to the rear lobby with a shallow rectangular fanlight, along with a doorway into the back of the outbuilding to the right, all now within a 20th-century concrete block outshot.

The interior plan is largely intact, with much of the simple 19th-century joinery surviving, including plank doors, a double-hinged plank door from the kitchen to the stair hall, and a staircase with chamfered square newels and stick balusters. Ground-floor fireplaces have 20th-century grates; the left-hand fireplace was formerly the kitchen fireplace with ovens, now blocked. On the first floor, there is a landing at the top of the stairs with doorways to the four rooms. The right-hand room has a 19th-century iron fire grate with a simple wooden mantelshelf. Penhale Farmhouse is a good and unspoiled example of a small farmhouse with a notably interesting plan.