Lower Northcott Farmhouse

Lower Northcott Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the mid 17th century, with a 19th century dairy wing and modernizations made around 1980. It is constructed of plastered local stone rubble, with stone rubble stables featuring plastered brick chimney shafts, and has a slate roof.

The house has a four-room-and-through-passage layout facing south. At the left end is an inner room parlour with a gable-end stack, connected to the hall by a short corridor that passes a small buttery. The hall has an axial stack that backs onto the passage, which contains the staircase. The lower end kitchen features a gable-end stack. A one-room plan 19th century dairy/service wing projects at right angles from the rear of the inner room parlour. Except for the rear block, the house appears to be a single-phase mid 17th century structure, with the hall having been floored over from the beginning. The building is two storeys high.

The exterior has an irregular six-window front with 20th century casements that include rectangular panes of leaded glass. This front also features a bay with a French window leading to the hall and a small bay window on the first floor at the left end. The passage front doorway is located to the right of centre and contains an old plank door behind a 20th century gabled porch. The rear of the passage is blocked by a small 20th century extension, and alongside it is the buttery window, which has an original moulded oak frame but has lost its mullions. The main roof is gable-ended to the left and hipped to the right.

The interior of the main block is well preserved, with most of the structural carpentry dating from the mid 17th century. All rooms feature similar chamfered and step-stopped crossbeams. The passage and kitchen partition is an oak plank-and-muntin screen with a Tudor arch doorway, where the muntins are chamfered with run-out stops. Superior oak plank-and-muntin screens are located on either side of the buttery, featuring ovolo-moulded muntins. The kitchen fireplace is partly blocked, but a roughly-chamfered oak lintel is exposed. The hall and parlour fireplaces have been rebuilt. The main block roof consists of clean side-pegged jointed cruck trusses with collars fixed by pegged mortise-and-tenon joints.