Halwyn

A former farmhouse and barn now used as farm buildings, dating from the early 17th century or earlier, with significant remodelling and extension during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The structure comprises slatestone rubble walls with some cob in the cross wall and upper barn walls. The house has partly fallen scantle slate roofs with a brick chimney over the gable end to the right and a hip to the left. The barn is covered with corrugated iron roofing and gable ends. The original roof of the house was probably steeper and at a slightly higher level.

The overall plan is L-shaped, with the house having a 3-room plan probably originally featuring a cross or through passage. The building is 2 storeys, though the floors of the house section have mostly been removed. The south front is irregular with 3 windows, with ground floor openings only. A projecting window bay sits to the front left of the hall, and a semi-circular stair projection projects to the rear between the hall and inner room to the left. A circa 18th-century small rear wing to the left links to a 2-storey barn beyond, with a further circa 17th or 18th-century 1-room service outshut to the rear of the right-hand room.

The interior preserves interesting 17th-century or earlier features in each of the 3 original rooms. The left-hand room contains a fireplace with chamfered and stopped oak corbels supporting an oak lintel with straight chamfer with stepped and run-out stops. The chamber fireplace above has a projecting breast, with the oak lintel carried on 1 corbel to the right and the other end set into the chimney breast wall. Beside this chimney breast to the left (north) is a blocked doorway formerly leading to the hall. To the rear of this blocked doorway is a newel or winder stair, now filled with rubble, which formerly gave access from the hall to the chamber above the inner room and the chamber over the hall, which may once have been open to the roof. A further doorway cut through and then blocked in the rear wall formerly led to the later service wing.

The hall contains 1 surviving oak cross beam with straight chamfer with stepped and run-out stops, and 9 sawn-off joist ends within mortices on each side. The fireplace position may have been to the front wall (later altered in the 19th century), in what appears to be a hall window bay to the front left, or back to back with inner room hearths in the cross wall to the left. An oak lintel low down to the rear wall to the right opens up a further possibility. The rubble and cob wall between the hall and lower end is a later insertion, and 2 chamfered oak lintels over a doorway towards the rear are reused roof timbers with slots from former use probably as truss blades morticed for collars.

The lower end room to the right (east) has oak beam ends in front and back walls for the chamber floor. Two doorways to the rear wall at the far left (west) and left of middle have oak lintels over them, with slots for jambs. The left-hand doorway leads into the yard at the rear; the other doorway leads into the outshut and retains its original chamfered cambered oak head with mortice slots for originally shouldered jambs. A later fireplace in the right-hand gable wall has rubble jambs and a cloam oven to the left (north). The outshut to the rear of this room has 3 keeping places to the left (west) wall and an oak beam projecting from the original rear wall to the right.

At the time of survey, the house was in a derelict state. This is a most interesting and rare early building in this part of Cornwall and would benefit from more thorough recording.