Higher Tregiddle Farmhouse And Building Adjoining Courtyard Wall To East And Garden Wall To Front

Farmhouse and adjoining outbuilding with garden walls to the front, dating from the 17th century and remodelled in approximately the mid-to-late 18th century.

The walls are constructed of shale rubble, limewashed within the rear courtyard. Dressed granite features include three doorways and six windows from the 17th century, with dressed granite quoins, jambstones and lintels to parts rebuilt in the 18th century, incorporating many 17th-century chamfered stones. The roof is a hipped scantle slate roof with a gable-ended wing at the rear left and a pyramidal scantle roof over the outbuilding. The ridges of the main roof and hips have approximately 17th-to-18th century handmade crested clay ridge tiles. Brick chimneys rise over the side walls and over the gable end of the rear wing.

The plan is L-shaped, formed by a rear left wing, a small extension at the rear right, and a square outbuilding joined by a doorway to the rear courtyard. In the 17th century the house was probably larger. It now comprises two large rooms to the front with a central passage leading to stairs between them, a parlour to the left of the passage, and a larger hall and kitchen with 17th-century beams on the right, plus a service wing at the rear left with a chamber over, now divided into two rooms. The building is two storeys.

The south-west front is nearly symmetrical with three windows. A doorway slightly left of centre contains a four-panel door within a large 20th-century glazed porch. First floor windows have slate-hung sill aprons forming hoods to granite lintels over the ground floor windows. The windows are wide 18th-century horizontal sliding sashes with some of their original crown glass. The meeting stiles are off centre to the left with 6:9 panes to each window except 6:6 to the square window over the doorway. A further 18th-century three-light horizontal sliding sash survives to the first floor of the south-east wall of the wing.

The rear north-east wall has a flat-headed chamfered granite doorway now leading into the north corner of the hall and kitchen, but this may mark the position of a former through passage. A pentice roof supported on three granite monoliths—the middle one with four chamfered corners and one to the right similar but shortened to a plinth for an iron stanchion—gives protection for access from the back doorway to a later cut doorway in the angle of the wing. This is probably an 18th-century compromise arrangement to avoid the parlour. There is another chamfered 17th-century doorway to the middle of the south-east wall of the wing and a two-light mullioned window (with mullion removed) to the right. A similar but complete two-light window survives to the north-west wall of the outbuilding. Further 17th-century features include a chamfered doorway between the rear right projection of the house and outbuilding, both probably resited, a chamfered frame to the left of this doorway, two single-light chamfered granite windows to the north-west wall and to the gable end of the wing.

The interior contains mostly 18th-century carpentry and joinery features: four-panel or ledged doors with HL-hinges, a simple T-plan stair, and a large wooden surround to the kitchen fireplace. The 17th-century ovolo-moulded beams with ogee tongue stops survive in the kitchen. The chamber over the wing has curved plasterwork to the canopied ceiling. The roof structures were not inspected but must date from the 18th century or earlier.

The garden walls to the south-west front are rubble with lower granite coped walls flanking a central entrance gateway with square dressed granite monolith piers.

This is a most interesting house deserving further detailed study to resolve its plan development. It has been little altered since the 18th century and retains many complete 17th-century features.