Barn Farmhouse Including Former Outbuilding Adjoining To West

Barn Farmhouse including Former Outbuilding Adjoining to West

This is a farmhouse of late 15th to early 16th century date with major improvements from the later 16th and 17th centuries. The building was thoroughly and carefully renovated around 1980. It is constructed of local stone and flint rubble, with the front plastered and incised as ashlar. The chimneyshafts are of stone rubble, and the roof is thatched.

The building is L-shaped in plan. The main block faces south, containing the house with a 3-room-and-through-passage layout. At the west end is an unheated inner room, probably formerly a dairy or buttery, adjoining the hall which has a stack backing onto the passage. On the other side of the passage is a service room formerly used as a kitchen, with a gable-end stack and smoking chamber projecting forward. The present kitchen occupies a converted wellhouse adjoining to the right. At the left end is a 2-room crosswing, also converted from outbuildings and projecting forward. The rear room is a single-room cottage with an axial stack, while the front room is now a garage.

The original house was mostly open to the roof, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. The roof over the inner room is a 20th-century replacement, leaving unclear whether this end was originally open to the roof or divided into two storeys. A fireplace was inserted in the hall in the mid or late 16th century, and the passage and service end were probably floored over at the same time, though the kitchen was thoroughly refurbished in the early or mid 17th century. The hall was probably floored over around the same period. The outbuildings were thoroughly refurbished and partly rebuilt around 1980, at which time the former wellhouse was converted to the present kitchen. The house is two storeys.

The main house has an irregular 5-window front with replacement 20th-century casements with glazing bars, the largest three on the first floor rising a short distance into the eaves. The passage front doorway, left of centre, contains a 20th-century plank door with a contemporary tile-roofed hood. The rear wall has similar 20th-century windows except towards the passage end of the hall where a small 17th-century oak stair window survives. A rear doorway to the inner room is blocked by a window, but a 17th-century oak doorframe with an ovolo-moulded surround remains visible here. The main house roof is gable-ended. The former outbuildings are lower with 20th-century doors and windows. The roof of the crosswing is hipped at the front.

Interior features of particular note include the lower side of the passage, which is lined by an oak plank-and-muntin screen that may be an original low partition screen. The former kitchen contains a large limestone ashlar fireplace with a chamfered oak lintel, partly patched with 19th-century brick. The oven to the right has an original limestone doorway but is now lined with 19th-century brick. Alongside to the left is a large former walk-in curing chamber with a ledge around it. The hall has a large limestone ashlar fireplace with an oak lintel featuring a chamfered surround and bar-pyramid stops. The crossbeam here has been replaced with another old timber. The partition between hall and inner room has been removed, and there is a roughly chamfered axial beam over the inner room.

Two early first-floor large-framed crosswalls contain chamfered doorframes. If the one in the hall/inner room partition is original, it would have provided ladder access from the open hall. The late 15th to early 16th-century roof survives over the hall, passage and kitchen, carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses with a hip cruck at the kitchen end. These trusses, the common rafter couples and the remaining original thatch are smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The former outbuildings contain exclusively 20th-century carpentry.