Tower Hill Farmhouse And Attached Walls And Gate Piers

Tower Hill Farmhouse and Attached Walls and Gate Piers

A farmhouse dating from the 17th century, with a resited datestone of 1614, remodelled around 1700 and again in the early to mid-18th century. The building stands on Castle Street in Bodmin.

The house is constructed of local rubble with timber lintels and some granite moorstone, incorporating reused 17th-century fragments. The roofs are finished in rag slate and scantle slate, hipped at the front end of the wing and at the far right. A 17th-century crested clay ridge tile sits over a gabled rear rubble lateral stack on the right. Another rubble lateral stack, heightened with a brick shaft, stands left of centre; a third lateral stack rises from the left of the front wing, and a brick gable stack is positioned on the left.

The plan is long and T-shaped. At the far left is a scullery kitchen with a later lean-to pantry behind. The kitchen and living room (possibly the original hall) has a later lean-to porch behind it. A stair hall with cross passage on the left leads to a small rear pantry attached left of the wide staircase. The parlour wing projects at right-angles in front of the pantry and passage. The main doorway opens into a lobby in front of the staircase. The principal parlour on the right has a lateral fireplace, with a later wing at the far right that lacks internal access.

The exterior presents two storeys in an irregular range of six windows. The windows include 18th-century twelve-pane hornless sashes with thick glazing bars (second from left and over the porch), early to mid-19th-century hornless sashes to the left and centre of the wing (each floor), paired sashes on each floor to the right, an early 19th-century thirty-pane three-light casement to the ground floor left, a 20th-century copy under the second window, and a 20th-century twelve-pane horned sash at the far right. The right-hand return of the parlour has a re-opened squint window with a 20th-century casement. A masonry joint marks the division between the right-hand wall of the wing and the rest of the building.

The main doorway, positioned right of the wing, is fitted with an 18th-century panelled door with fielded panels. An early to mid-19th-century open porch, one bay wide and three bays deep, is carried on square wooden posts with elliptical arches between and a low-pitched roof sloping down to the left. A second doorway between the left-hand windows has a late 19th-century planked door with a slate hood on wooden brackets. A four-panel door serves the right-hand wing. A datestone is positioned under the eaves above the principal chamber.

The rear elevation contains several old windows, including a tall 18th-century eighteen-pane sash with thick glazing bars and some early 19th-century sashes with glazing bars. Rear porches have panelled doors. The left-hand return has a blocked doorway, while the right-hand return is lit by an early 19th-century sixteen-pane sash.

The interior has remained largely unaltered for at least a century, retaining most of its 18th-century structural features including undulating floors, studwork partitions, and hardwood roof structures with lapped and pegged cranked collars and serpentine-shaped collars to the slightly steeper roof of the wing. Multiple two-panel doors survive throughout, including an attic door with an unusual spring latch.

The parlour, dating from around 1700, features a bolection-moulded two-panel door, a moulded ceiling cornice with a central oval containing an acanthus rose, and a late 19th-century chimneypiece with a tiled grate set within a possible 17th-century fireplace. The chamber above the parlour has a bolection-moulded chimneypiece with a late 19th-century grate and a plain plaster barrel ceiling. The front parlour contains two 18th-century cupboards set into spaces continued from the masonry wall and curved at the stair hall side, with shouldered round-arched panelled doors. The stair hall contains a wide 18th-century dogleg staircase with a 19th-century stick balustrade.

The kitchen and living room has a brick-lined fireplace with an early 18th-century moulded cornice and panelled overmantel surviving from its original chimneypiece. A splayed cupboard, possibly a former window, sits on the right, and three-leaf window shutters are fitted to the wide front window. The scullery and laundry room contains an 18th or early 19th-century fireplace with a copper and a cloam oven to its right; a water trough is set into the wall by the front window. The floors are laid in slate. The pantry by the staircase has 19th-century shelves and a wooden ventilator over the partition. Running through all extensions at the rear is a slate-covered land drain; some slates bear incised decoration.

The subsidiary features include a rubble wall adjoining at right-angles to the front right of the left-hand doorway, continuing with slate monoliths and a low rubble wall in front of the remainder of the house, with a pair of granite gate piers on the right. Garden walls at Tower Hill Farmhouse were listed separately on 8 June 1972.