Walnut Tree House

Walnut Tree House is a 17th-century house, possibly with earlier origins, located on Station Road in Blagdon. The building is roughcast over local rubble, with the front exposed, and features a Roman tile roof with stone coping and brick stacks. It has an original two-unit plan, with a left-end stack for a heated room and a small unheated service room to the right. The house has two storeys and a two-window front, which includes timber lintels over a blocked doorway to the left, a late 20th-century door to the right, and a mix of 19th and 20th-century casements, along with an 8/8-pane sash window to the right. There is a probable 18th-century pegged wooden frame for a three-light window on the ground floor to the left.

At the rear, there is a 19th-century gabled addition and single-storey additions to the right, made from similar materials. Inside, the house retains all original stop-chamfered beams and roof trusses with dove-tailed collars and morticing for in-line purlins. There is an open fireplace on the left with a wooden bressummer and two recesses at the rear, one featuring cockshead hinges on the door. Solid-tread stairs rise from the first floor to the attic, and another solid-tread wooden staircase is set into a slight recess on the rear wall. The house also has 17th-century plank and batten doors with scribed edging and original wrought-iron fittings, along with reset 17th-century pegged wooden doorframes. Walnut Tree House is a well-preserved example of the two-unit plan that became increasingly common in the later 17th century in this area, featuring many original interior elements, particularly the solid-tread stairs, which are rare and notable survivals of a once-common vernacular type.