Sethnoe Farmhouse, Front Garden Walls And Adjoining Outbuildings

Farmhouse, front garden walls, gate piers and adjoining outbuildings. The main house dates from the 17th century or earlier, but was largely rebuilt in the 18th century and extended in the 19th century. It incorporates 17th-century and possibly earlier fragments and is surrounded by farm buildings.

The house is constructed of dressed coursed granite and elvan with granite and elvan rubble, finished with dressed granite quoins, cills, jambstones and lintels. The rear is painted. The outbuildings are of granite and killas rubble with dressed quoins, jambstones and lintels. The roof is a fairly steep heavily grouted scantle slate roof, with some 17th-century crested clay ridge tiles over the right-hand part with a half-hipped end. Large brick chimney stacks are positioned over the gable end on the left and towards the right over the cross wall; there is a lateral brick chimney shaft over approximately the middle of the front wall. Cast-iron ogee gutters are fitted throughout.

The building has a double depth plan with a shallow projecting integral outshut behind the left-hand side, heightened in the 19th century. Farm buildings adjoin at right angles to the front of the right-hand side and to the rear of the right-hand end. A long range of farm buildings runs parallel to the rear of the house and extends to the right.

The house represents an 18th and 19th-century remodelling and probably mostly a rebuilding of what was likely a 17th-century house. The interior (which was not inspected) contains a large living room to the left of the present through passage, a small room or vestibule to the right of the entrance, a parlour on the right, an outbuilding to the far right (formerly part of the house and said to have had a large fireplace), and service rooms behind. There is evidence for a doorway to the right of the present doorway and a blocked doorway behind the right-hand part.

The house is of two storeys with an irregular north-east front of four windows overall. The front wall is of several periods: probably 18th-century dressed coursed almost ashlar to the left of the doorway; coarsed dressed stone probably from the 17th century at the outbuilding front to the far right; and rubble, partly coarsed, between. A straight joint with irregular dressed granite quoins between the house and outbuildings is probably 18th-century.

The doorway, positioned left of the middle of the house front, contains a 4-panel top-glazed door. A small window opening just to the right of the doorway occupies the original 18th-century doorway position. Wide window openings to the left and above are 18th-century: the first-floor window is an 18th-century 18-pane 2-light horizontal sliding sash, and the later 3-light horizontal sash to the ground floor is set over a heightened sill. To the right of the doorway is a 4-pane sash with a circa early 19th-century 16-pane hornless sash above (probably dating to when the doorway was altered). A 12-pane hornless sash is positioned to the right of the lateral chimney, with a glazed door in a former window opening farther to the right; a circa early 19th-century 16-pane hornless sash sits above this. The outbuilding front has a wide first-floor window opening with a fixed casement, but the ground floor is concealed by a 19th-century piggery set at right angles to the front. At the rear, above a blocked doorway, is a reused flat chamfered 17th-century lintel. Two 4-pane sashes and otherwise 20th-century windows are present.

A shuttered hatch providing access to a cellar or basement is set into the projecting outshut. A low 19th-century garden wall adjoins the left-hand side at right angles to the front: it is coursed dressed granite with granite coping surmounted by wrought-iron railings with spear-head finials. Gabled granite monolith gate piers support an original wrought-iron gate with a swagged top rail.

The outbuildings are mostly 19th-century and incorporate some 17th-century dressed stone, including fragments of mullioned windows. The part adjoining the right-hand end of the house as a lean-to and continuing as a wing to the rear may be 18th-century. This lean-to serves as a piggery with its doorway facing away from the house and was extended in a similar manner in the 19th century to the front. The buildings parallel to the rear of the house are built partly cut into the slope at the rear, with fronts facing the same direction as the farmhouse. Where still covered in scantle slate, the roofs are hipped.

The barn behind the right-hand side of the house has stone steps within the courtyard and a first-floor loading doorway. The section projecting to the right beyond the farmhouse has ground-floor doorways with windows between, and a first-floor winnowing doorway with a doorway in the rear wall opposite, linked to the bank by a stone ramp. A window to the right of the doorway and a former window to the left (later built against) are present, with pigeon holes under the eaves between. Adjoining the right-hand side with its front slightly set back is another bank barn with a lower roof line. Ground-floor openings only face the front, with doorways and windows between. Access to the loft is via a rear doorway linked to the bank by a ramp rebuilt in the 20th century. On the far right is a single-storey building with three openings to the front and a later outshut to the rear, roofed in corrugated asbestos.

Linked to the front of the garden, with the garden wall adjoining to the rear left and a piggery adjoining to the rear right, is a former cottage and former cartshed. The cottage, now with a monopitch corrugated iron roof, has a 2-room plan with a nearly central doorway to the front and a small window on either side. The openings are spanned by reused 17th-century chamfered granite fragments.

A stone formerly in the churchyard wall commemorated a member of the Coade family of Sethnoe.

Sethnoe is one of the best farmhouses in the parish, hardly altered since the 19th century, retaining much 18th-century fabric and sufficient 17th-century work to indicate its former quality and importance.