Livenhayes Farmhouse

Livenhayes Farmhouse

A farmhouse, probably dating from the early 16th century, with major alterations and improvements undertaken in the 17th century (the kitchen was refurbished in 1662) and some 19th-century modernisation. The building is constructed from local stone and flint rubble with stone rubble stacks and Beerstone ashlar chimneyshafts. The roof is thatched, with slate covering the rear outshots.

The house follows a three-room-and-through-passage plan, oriented to face south and built descending the hillslope. At the uphill (west) end is an unheated inner room still used as a dairy. Adjacent to this is the hall, which contains an axial stack backing onto the passage. At the downhill (east) end is the kitchen with a gable-end stack. The house is two storeys with secondary outshots to the rear of the hall, passage and kitchen.

The roofspace is inaccessible, preventing full assessment of the early structural history. The building clearly began as some form of open hall house, initially heated by an open hearth fire; the thatcher has observed smoke-blackened timbers in the roof. The chamber above the inner room jetties into the upper end of the hall and may be an original feature, with a doorway in the partition thought to have provided ladder access from the hall. The hall stack was probably inserted in the mid to late 16th century, with the hall being floored in the late 16th or early 17th century. The service end was thoroughly refurbished to provide a kitchen in 1662 by Samuel Newbury, as recorded on a plaque in the chimneyshaft.

The front elevation is irregular with four windows. Most are probably early 19th-century casements containing rectangular panes of leaded glass, although the kitchen has a replacement casement with glazing bars. The dairy window is unglazed, covered with metal gauze and fitted with internal shutters; other dairy windows are similarly treated, with that in the end wall probably dating from the 17th century, featuring two lights with a chamfered mullion. The first-floor windows rise a short distance into the eaves. The passage front doorway, positioned right of centre, contains a 19th-century part-glazed plank door behind a contemporary gabled hood on shaped raking struts, now augmented by a pair of timber posts. The front wall is braced by a couple of 19th-century raking buttresses. The roof is half-hipped to the left and gable-ended to the right.

The interior is of high quality. The dairy contains a plain chamfered crossbeam. The partition between the dairy and hall is plastered over but is evidently oak-framed. The hall displays high-quality carpentry detail. The fireplace, now obscured by a 19th-century grate, was originally large, and a fine overmantel survives, carved from the oak lintel and moulded with an embattled crest. The ceiling comprises six panels of richly moulded intersecting beams, abutting the internal jetty at the upper end.

All features at the kitchen end date from 1662. Along the lower (kitchen) side of the passage runs an oak plank-and-muntin screen; on the kitchen side the muntins are chamfered with step stops above an oak bench. The crossbeam is chamfered with scroll stops. The large kitchen fireplace is constructed of painted stone ashlar with an oak lintel and a low Tudor-arch head with chamfered surround. The large oven with cast iron door was rebuilt in the 19th century. The lintel extends across a cupboard to the right; this was originally a walk-in curing chamber with an arched head cut into the lintel, now hidden.

On the first floor, the partition of the original jettied chamber is a closed truss incorporating an oak plank-and-muntin screen that includes the ladder access doorway, which features a two-centred arch with moulded surround. The remainder of the roof is carried on jointed cruck trusses, one of which is plastered over. Without access to the roofspace, it cannot be established whether all the trusses are contemporary.

Livenhayes is a particularly fine example of a late medieval farmhouse modernised in the 16th and 17th centuries to an unusually high standard.