Ennys Farmhouse

Ennys Farmhouse

Farmhouse dating from the 17th century or earlier, remodelled and enlarged around the early to mid-18th century. The building is constructed of granite rubble with granite dressings, with scantle slate roofs and gable ends. Stone chimney stacks rise over the gable ends; there is a large lateral stone stack over the rear of the right-hand room and a brick stack over the gable end of the rear wing.

The house now has an overall irregular T-shaped plan. The remains of a 17th-century or earlier house occupy the far right, now used as a dairy, and the 17th-century rear wall of the right-hand reception room survives with a formerly external lateral fireplace. During the 18th century, the left-hand end of the house was mostly rebuilt and extended to create an asymmetrical two-room plan with a stair hall behind a central entrance hall. A back kitchen was built or remodelled from a 17th-century wing set at right angles behind the right-hand room. The former through passage of the 17th-century house and part of the former hall were remodelled as a dairy with a fireplace incorporating a 17th-century roll-moulded jambstone and a chamfered jambstone. The front doorway, probably dating from the early 17th century, is inscribed HMM 1688 and remains in situ. An outshut was added behind the left-hand room around the later 18th or early 19th century.

The exterior presents two storeys. The south-east front is symmetrical with five windows and a central doorway, plus a lower dairy front to the right with a 17th-century doorway. The 18th-century doorway has a 6-panel door with geometric glazed overlight dating to the 18th or early 19th century. The windows are late 18th or early 19th-century 12-pane sashes with much crown glass. Coving appears over the first-floor windows, and 17th-century ovolo-moulded beams are reused as lintels. The 17th-century doorway has cavetto and ovolo moulding with crossed dice stops. The stair hall features a tall 6-over-9-pane hornless sash. The service wing retains two original 18th-century 12-pane hornless sashes with wide glazing bars that are internally ovolo-moulded on the ground-floor right-hand wall; other sashes are later.

Interior features of 17th-century date include part of a roof truss set into the right-hand gable end of the taller part of the house at a much lower level than the main roof back wall of the hall, with the hall fireplace in its original position, and reused jambstones to the dairy fireplace. Surviving 18th-century features include most of the original circa mid-17th-century structure, carpentry, joinery and plasterwork. These comprise stone flags to the entrance and stair hall, an open-well closed-string stair with column-on-vase turned balusters, moulded cornices to the ground floor of the stair hall and entrance hall, eared doorcases and 6-panel doors to the reception rooms, full panelling and modillioned cornice to the right-hand room, a plaster modillioned cornice to the left-hand room, ceiling cornices to the rear chamber of the service wing, and 2-panel doors to the chambers. A 20th-century reconstructed plaster barrel ceiling appears in the central front chamber, and ceiling beams with straight chamfers and run-out stops run through the kitchen. 19th-century features include a fine circa late-19th-century chimneypiece in 18th-century style in the right-hand room, fitted to the 17th-century hall fireplace.

Ennys was the home of the Millet family in the 17th and 18th centuries. The house exemplifies the 18th-century practice of retaining part of an earlier structure during major rebuilds, incorporating vestiges of a former high-quality 17th-century house whilst retaining most features of the fine 18th-century house that largely replaced it.