Little Toller Farmhouse

TOLLER FRATRUM SY 59 NE - 2/124 Little Toller Farmhouse 26-1-56 GV II*

Manor Farmhouse. Mid C16, for John Samways of Winterborne St Martin. C19 range at right angles at south-west corner. Limestone ashlar walls with Ham Stone dressings. Shallow-coursed rubble-stone at left hand end, and in C19 wing. Concrete tile roof with gable ends and stone gable-copings. Brick stack at left hand gable, C19. Stone stack with verge and cornice at right hand gable, C17. Projecting stack at centre of front wall terminating in a gable. 2 chimneys stands up from gable-copings either side of apex, with octagonal cappings. At gable apex, barley-sugar finial, with carved monkey holding a hammer. Octagonal buttress at right hand end, with barley-sugar finial terminating in a griffin. 2 storeys and attics. 4 windows, total. Ground floor openings; Cl9 sash with low cill left of stack. Coupled C19 sashes, low cill, immediately right of front door. Plate-glass panes. Front door immediately right of front stack, straight-chamfered jambs; door, flush- panelled with 4 glazed lights, C19. Porch, moulded stone canopy with frieze and cornice carried on octagonal stone shafts with bases and capitals, possibly C18. Label of unusual form over ground floor openings. First floor windows, one 2-light, and two 4-light mullioned windows with 4-centred heads, C16. Cast-iron casements with glazing-bars. 2-light C19 casement at left hand end. Rear of house, banded flint and stone walling. Stair-tower on east gable-end projects, C16 buttress at north-east corner. Projecting stair-well on rear wall with plinth moulding carried round it.

Interior: Probable garderobe tower at east end, now cupboards at both levels. Rear staircase tower, now with early C20 stairs, flagstones. House much re-fashioned in C19. Roof, much rebuilt 1960's, stone original principal rafters survive, double-morticed to take wagon-bracing. Rebuilt wagon-roof construction throughout whole roof, originally C16, bracing original. Service-range, early C19, wing at south-west corner, at right-angles is included. (RCHM Dorset I, p.251 (2))

Listing NGR: SY5781997410