Withen Farmhouse

Farmhouse. Built in the early or mid 16th century, with significant alterations in the late 16th and 17th centuries, and some 18th and 19th century refurbishment. The walls are of plastered cob on rubble footings, with repairs using brick. There is a brick and cob chimney stack, both topped with 20th-century brickwork. The east-facing range appears to have been adapted from an original 3- or 4-room plan with a through-passage. Following the collapse of the service end due to flooding in 1973, the through-passage is now located at the left (southern) end. The main hall has a projecting rear lateral stack, and the small inner room has an axial stack. A fourth room, originally located at the right (northern) end, may be a 17th-century addition and has since been sub-divided. The current main entrance now opens into an entrance lobby formed from the inner half of this room, while the outer half has had its floor removed and converted into an agricultural store. Prior to its collapse, the former service end was apparently not used for domestic purposes, as a barn was situated there. The farmhouse is now two storeys throughout. The front has an irregular 5-window arrangement of various late 19th and early 20th century casement windows, with glazing bars; a 5-light window is set within the former hall. All four first-floor windows have thatch eyebrows above them. The three doors—one to the passage, one to the present entrance lobby, and a third to the agricultural store—are all late 19th and early 20th century in style. The main door has a 20th-century porch with a corrugated plastic monopitch roof. The right end front wall (to the store) and much of the first-floor front has been rebuilt with brick. The roof is gable-ended, with the upper part of the right end wall rebuilt with timber framing. The rear elevation has similar 19th-century casement windows with glazing bars, although the window to the rear of the hall contains rectangular panes of leaded glass. While the interior was modernised and rearranged in the 19th century, the survival of the original plan and early features suggests that the refurbishment was relatively superficial. A 16th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen partitions the upper side of the passage; its muntins are chamfered with cut diagonal stops, and it includes a blocked shoulder-headed doorway. The hall has a late 16th to early 17th century axial beam, with a soffit-chamfered edge and step stops. The inner room also has an axial beam with a soffit-chamfered edge—with runout stops, possibly late 17th century. Both fireplaces are blocked. In the fourth room, the crossbeam and half-beams are soffit-chamfered with scroll stops and date to the 17th century, with a later brick partition beneath the crossbeam. The roof over the main house is inaccessible; the trusses align with the first-floor partitions. However, the roof over the agricultural store displays a side-pegged jointed cruck truss and a hip cruck. The remainder of the roof is possibly 16th or 17th century and may be smoke-blackened, particularly over the hall. Withen Farmhouse is a little-modernized farmhouse with much of its long structural history obscured by later plaster.