The New Inn

THE NEW INN, FARWAY

A house, formerly a public house. Probably dating from the late 16th or early 17th century, though most of the structure was rebuilt in the late 17th or early 18th century. The walls are plastered but contain a mixture of local stone and flint rubble, cob, brick, concrete block and timber framing, with a thatched roof.

The building follows an essentially U-shaped plan, standing two storeys high. The main block faces south-west and employs a 3-room lobby entrance plan. At the right end is a parlour, while the largest central room is a former kitchen. The kitchen and parlour share an axial stack that contains back-to-back fireplaces, with the lobby entrance positioned between the rooms in front of the stack. At the left (north-west) end is a small unheated room, behind which sits the main stair. One-room plan service blocks project at right angles to the rear of each end: the left one was originally an unheated cellar, cider house and pantry with a bed chamber above, while the right one served as stables but has since been converted to domestic use.

The house represents the result of substantial rebuilding in the late 17th or early 18th century. However, the variety of building materials within the outer walls suggests that some sections predate this period, and reused pieces of early 17th-century carpentry are present. The left end wall is timber-framed above first floor level, suggesting the house may once have extended further in that direction. The left service wing dates to the late 17th or early 18th century, while the former stable wing is 19th century. In the 20th century, the narrow courtyard between the two rear wings was roofed over.

The exterior presents a regular though asymmetrical front of four old, possibly 18th-century casement windows containing rectangular panes of leaded glass. The front lobby entrance doorway sits right of centre and contains a 20th-century part-glazed door beneath a flat hood on shaped timber brackets. Behind the plaster, the front wall consists of stone rubble to first floor level with brick above. The roof is hipped at each end.

Internally, the right end parlour was renovated in the late 19th century, with detail from that period exposed. The kitchen fireplace in the central room is constructed in brick with one side supported on an oak post and a chamfered oak lintel. The chamfered axial beam may be original, though it appears suspicious of being a replacement. The main stair is a late 17th or early 18th-century dogleg stair with closed string, square newel posts with shaped finials and turned balusters. The first floor contains some original late 17th or early 18th-century joinery detail, including a corridor along the rear with fielded 2-panel doors hung on H-hinges and matching cupboards in the parlour chamber. The roof bases show straight principals from what are probably late 17th or early 18th-century A-frame trusses visible on the first floor.

The New Inn was formerly known as Hodders House, a family name appearing in the parish registers only in the early 17th century. It is one of a group of attractive listed buildings comprising the hamlet of Farway.