Higher Greendale Farmhouse

Higher Greendale Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the 15th or early 16th century, with alterations in later periods. The walls are roughcast cob on stone footings, and it has a gabled-end slate roof. Originally built with a three-room plan, including a through-passage, the house was initially open to the roof and heavily smoke-blackened throughout. The hall was the last room to be given a first floor, likely in the 17th century when a rear lateral stack was constructed. This stack also likely served a wing to the rear of the hall, which was used as a kitchen and remains so today. This wing is of cruck construction and was open to the roof until it was heightened and floored around 1937, although whether the roof was sooted is unknown. A single-storey wing from the 19th century projects from the original service end. A late addition of an angle stack provides heating to an inner room.

The front of the house has a three-window range; the upper floor has 2- and 3-light casement windows, while the ground floor has casement windows of 4-lights to the hall and 3-lights to the inner room. The rear wing has two early 19th-century ground-floor casement windows with saddle bars. A rear doorway into the passage has a chamfered lintel mitred into the jambs, although the jambs are now concealed.

Inside, the passage has a chamfered lintel above the former doorway into the service end. The hall has 1- and 2-and-a-half beams running axially, chamfered with step stops. The fireplace has a chamfered lintel, with its stops having been removed when an 18th-century moulded mantelpiece was added. Planked cupboard doors are fitted with strap hinges. A late 17th- or early 18th-century fielded panel door leads to a first-floor room above the passage, fixed with HL hinges. The hall’s first floor is raised approximately 10 inches. The roof structure features two jointed crucks, pegged and morticed at the apex, trenched purlins, slightly cranked collars, and a large diagonal ridge piece, all heavily smoke-blackened. Sooted thatch and battening were removed when the roof was slated. Two late medieval lath and plaster partitions stand within the hall, one clean to the inner room and another lightly sooted towards the hall; these do not relate to the crucks. A third cruck, a jointed base cruck, is visible in the wing.