Lower Southwood Cottage Lower Southwood Farmhouse

Lower Southwood Farmhouse and Lower Southwood Cottage

This farmhouse and adjoining cottage were originally one house, dating from the early 17th century and refurbished around 1700. The cottage incorporates part of a late 19th-century coach house. The older parts are constructed of plastered cob on rubble footings, much of which was rebuilt or faced with brick around 1700. Some late 19th-century brick is also present. The chimneys are brick or stone rubble stacks topped with 19th-century brick and some late 19th-century chimney pots. The roof is thatch with Roman tiles to the late 19th-century section.

The building forms a U-shape. The south-facing main block follows a 3-room-and-through-passage plan with a small unheated dairy instead of an inner room at the left (western) end. The hall has an axial stack backing onto the dairy, and there is a parlour with an end stack at the right (eastern) end. A kitchen block with a projecting outer lateral stack is built at right angles behind the left end, with the main stair located in the angle between the kitchen and main block. Lower Southwood Cottage occupies the right end rear block and contains 2 rooms. The front room is early 17th-century and contains a disused stairwell, served by a rear axial stack; the rear room has been converted from a late 19th-century coach house. All buildings are 2 storeys.

The front is a regular though not symmetrical 7-window brick elevation. The brick is laid to Flemish bond with decorative use of burnt headers. At the base is a plinth of rounded bricks over exposed rubble footings. All windows have low segmental arches overhead; those second from the left end are blind. The remainder contain similar late 19th-century casements with glazing bars. The front passage doorway, right of centre, has a late 19th-century 4-panel door behind a contemporary porch with trellis sides and a tiled gable roof with shaped bargeboards. The roof is gable-ended to the right and hipped to the left. The east-facing outer face of the right-hand rear block shows the blind gable end of the main block, built of circa 1700 brick. Most of this section has been rebuilt in 19th-century brick and contains a 2-window front of late 19th-century casements with glazing bars. Both rear blocks have hipped roofs.

The interior retains a good deal of early 17th-century work, though much is obscured by later plaster. The screens either side are late 17th-century frames, partly exposed, with timbers of slight scantling, straight braces, and a contemporary 2-panel door on the lower side. The hall, kitchen, and front room of the cottage rear block all contain early 17th-century soffit-chamfered end scroll-stopped crossbeams. The service end parlour was rebuilt around 1700 and has a plain soffit-chamfered crossbeam and a brick fireplace with a curving pentan and oak lintel shaped to a segmental arch. The hall fireplace is blocked, though its large oak lintel is evident. The kitchen fireplace is large and built of stone but its lintel is covered over. The cottage fireplace is blocked. The present stair is probably 19th-century, though the door to it from the hall is late 17th-century with 2 fielded panels. The disused stairwell in the cottage is early 17th-century and oak-framed. The chamber over the front cottage room has the remains of a 17th-century plaster cornice with simple reeded moulding.

The 4-bay roof of the main block is original and unusual: the front has simple straight principals whilst the rear has side-pegged jointed crucks. The collars could not be examined but are probably pegged dovetail-shaped and lap-jointed, like the collar examined on the side-pegged jointed cruck over the early 17th-century section of the cottage rear block. In the roof space, the top of an early 17th-century framed crosswall between the front block and cottage can be examined. It is close-studded with lathes set in holes to create a ladder backing for the cob infill. The roof over the kitchen is circa 1700, comprising 1-frame trusses of relatively slender scantling with pegged lap-jointed collars.

Lower Southwood is an interesting and attractive farmhouse.