The Barn

The Barn is a house, originally a farmhouse and with adjoining stables, dating to the mid-16th century. It has been altered in the 17th and 19th centuries. The walls are of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with some repairs in brick and stone rubble. The roof is thatched. The building is L-shaped, with the main block facing west and originally comprising three rooms. The largest room, at the southern end, has a projecting front lateral stack with a late 19th-century chimney shaft topped by a contemporary Rolle Estate chimney pot. A C20 brick stack is located in the smaller middle room. The combination of alterations makes tracing the original layout difficult. A 17th-century stable block projects from the northern end. The house is two storeys high. The front has an irregular two-window arrangement between the projecting stack and the stable block. The windows are late 18th- to early 19th-century oak-framed casements with rectangular panes of thin leaded glass; the first-floor windows extend into the eaves. A C20 plank door is centrally positioned. The stack includes a small fire window. The inner side of the stable has a late 19th- to early 20th-century plank door flanked by an unglazed C19 window frame and a C20 fixed pane window. The main roof is gable-ended to the right and hipped to the left, with a difference in height between the two. The stable has a lower, gable-ended roof. The rear elevation has C20 casements with glazing bars on the ground floor, but retains some late 18th- to early 19th-century oak-framed casements with leaded glass on the first floor.

Inside the large room at the southern end, the crossbeam is boxed in, and the fireplace is blocked. The left-hand room reveals original structural carpentry, including a late 16th- to early 17th-century soffit-chamfered crossbeam with run-out stops. The lower section of the roof on the left side is also of this early date, featuring a three-bay section with side-pegged jointed cruck trusses, darkened by possible smoke-blackening from a past open hearth fire. The taller section at the right end is inaccessible, but the feet of the principals suggest a 17th-century A-frame truss. The stable block retains a pitched cobble floor and has an open roof with two A-frame trusses, pegged lap-jointed collars. Interpreting the building’s development is currently difficult, and care should be taken during any modernization to avoid disturbing original 16th- and 17th-century features.