Looke Farmhouse

Looke Farmhouse is a detached farmhouse dated R and M H 1700 on the door lintel. It features shallow rubble-stone walls with dressed stone quoins and a hipped stone slab and slate roof. The building has four stacks, with stone bases and brick above, arranged in an extruding Greek Cross plan form. The house is double-fronted and single-depth, with an attached service range on the side. It stands two storeys high with brick-vaulted basements and attics.

The facade has two sash windows with glazing bars, plain dressed stone surrounds, a pulvinated frieze, and a moulded cornice. The ground floor windows have deep segmental pediments with blind carved fanlight decoration and rosettes at the center, while the upper windows feature wooden lintels. The two basement openings have stone labels and voussoirs above them. At the upper center, there is a square stone tablet with large and small bolection mouldings.

The front doorway is centrally located, accessed by five stone steps, and has moulded stone jambs and a depressed arch head with rosettes in the spandrels. The jambs are cut away, and the carved and dated lintel has a pulvinated frieze above and the same segmental pediment. A carved stone urn sits atop the doorway, flanked by three Green Men carved in low relief, along with two large stone blocks carved as wheatsheaves.

A dormer window at the center of the roof features a two-light wooden casement with glazing bars, which is a 20th-century insertion. The attached range on the right side is a former 18th-century kitchen block with rubble-stone walls and a slate roof with stone gable-coping. It has a tall brick stack at the right-hand eaves and is lower than the main range. This range includes a ground floor two-light French window with horizontal glazing bars and a three-light wooden casement above it, complete with a wooden cill and lintel.

At the rear, there is a 19th-century two-storey pentice-roofed outshut, featuring a renewed plank door at the center with a wooden lintel above. Inside, the house has a lobby entrance and a single-depth layout with fireplaces set in the corners of the rooms. There is a doorcase stair leading from the former kitchen to the upper rooms.

This farmhouse is very unusual in Dorset, both in its plan and elevation.