Middle Weaver Farmhouse

Farmhouse. Built in the early 16th century, with major rebuilding and refurbishment in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and modernisation around 1970. The walls are plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with cob and stone rubble stacks topped with 19th and 20th century brick, one chimneyshaft being plastered; the roof is thatched. The house follows a four-room lobby entrance plan, facing east-southeast. To the uphill (south) side are two unheated service rooms, likely originally used as a dairy, buttery and similar spaces. These are followed by the former kitchen, with a central stack backing onto a parlour at the north end. The lobby entrance is located in front of the kitchen stack. Originally an open hall house, only a small portion of the early 16th-century structure remains, specifically the inner room and the southern service room. The chamber above the inner room was jettied into the open hall. The remainder of the house was rebuilt and rearranged in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The farmhouse is two storeys high, with secondary lean-to outshots to the rear. The front has an irregular six-window facade with a variety of 18th, 19th and 20th century casement windows, mostly with glazing bars. The front doorway, slightly left of centre, has a 20th-century plank door within a contemporary thatched porch. The roof is gable-ended. Inside, an original oak plank-and-muntin screen separates the two former service rooms; the lower panels have been cut out, and the screen includes a large shoulder-headed doorway. The large scantling axial joists above the former inner room include a trimmer indicating previous ladder access to the chamber above, and these joists also jetty over the screen with rounded ends. The oak crosswall above the screen is large framed. The remaining interior features date from the late 17th and early 18th centuries, including the kitchen fireplace with an oak-framed front and a chamfered lintel with scroll stops. Both the kitchen and parlour feature chamfered crossbeams with run-out stops; the parlour fireplace is a 20th-century replacement. The roof structure consists of A-frame trusses, possibly with secondary spiked lap-jointed collars. Middle Weaver Farmhouse forms a grouping with its neighbor, Lower Weaver Farmhouse.