Poplar Farmhouse And Barn Adjoining West

Poplar Farmhouse and adjoining barn date from around the late 17th century, with extensions added circa the late 18th and 20th centuries; the barn was constructed circa the late 18th or early 19th century. The farmhouse is built of stone rubble, with a rendered front, and has a gabled clay double-roman tiled roof. The barn is of stone rubble with a re-clad corrugated asbestos roof. Rendered gable-end stacks have brick shafts.

The original plan consisted of two rooms facing south: a kitchen on the right (east) and a parlour on the left (west), both rooms heated by fireplaces in gable-end stacks. A central entrance leads to a lobby, with straight stairs rising between the rooms; the partition between the lobby and kitchen is a later addition. Later, circa the late 18th or early 19th century, a large outshut was added to the back of the kitchen, and a barn to the west end. A porch was added circa the 19th century, and a single-storey extension to the right (east) in the 20th century.

The symmetrical, two-bay gabled south front features small gableted apex coping stones. Ground and first floor windows are 6-pane sashes in segmental arch-headed openings; two smaller 2-light casements illuminate the attics within the gables, which have small blocked openings in their apexes. A gabled porch is centrally positioned with a segmental-headed doorway and a panelled and glazed inner door. The right (east) return has a small wooden single-light ovolo-moulded window in the gable and a C20 single-storey extension. The rear (north) elevation displays two gables with small blocked openings in the apexes, again with gableted coping stones; it includes 2-light casements and a large single-storey lean-to outshut on the left.

Inside, the kitchen has a stone flag floor, a chamfered cross-beam with cyma stops, and a large fireplace with an ovolo-moulded bressumer with run-out stops, now blocked by an early 20th-century range. The parlour has a square-section cross-beam and a C20 fireplace. Straight stairs are a later addition. Two first-floor rooms have chamfered cross-beams with cyma stops and plank doors. Boxed-in winder stairs lead to the attic, with a plank door at the bottom and a simple balustrade at the top. The attic chambers retain chamfered cross-beams with run-out stops and a partition between the rooms with a chamfered doorframe, cyma stops, carpenter's mitres, and a plank door. The original tenoned-purlin roof structure is complete, with common rafters. The rear outshut has a tenoned-purlin lean-to roof, and the barn a 3-bay staggered tenoned-purlin roof with later nailed collars; both feature stone flag floors. A doorway from the barn to a first-floor chamber has been blocked.

This is an interesting example of a small, late 17th-century house with a symmetrical gabled front and a simple two-room plan.