Underdown Farmhouse Including Front Garden Boundary Walls

Underdown Farmhouse including Front Garden Boundary Walls

A farmhouse with origins in the late 15th to early 16th century, substantially enlarged and improved during the later 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries, with some 19th-century modernisation and a thorough renovation around 1985. The building is constructed of local stone and flint rubble, possibly including some cob in the plastered rear sections, with stone rubble chimney stacks. Two of the stacks have late 17th to early 18th-century Hamstone ashlar chimney shafts; the third is topped with 20th-century brick. The roof is thatched and gable-ended.

The farmhouse is 2 storeys with a leanto outshot on the rear block, built down a gentle hillslope facing roughly south-south-west. It follows a 3-room-and-through-passage plan. At the uphill (west) end is an unheated inner room dairy, now converted to a kitchen, with a gable-end stack serving only the first-floor chamber. The hall contains an axial stack backing onto a wide passage, whose rear doorway is now blocked. At the downhill (east) end is a lower end parlour with its own gable-end stack. A 1-room service block projects at right angles to the rear of the parlour and has been brought into domestic use.

The building has a complex structural history. The surviving hall, passage and parlour section forms the original house. The original roof is smoke-blackened from end to end, indicating an open-hearth design with the house heated by an open fire and divided by low partitions. The late 15th to early 16th-century house probably had a 2 or 3-room-and-through-passage plan, though evidence from the original roof suggests it may originally have been larger. In the early or mid-16th century, the lower end (parlour) was floored over and a full-height crosswall constructed along the lower side of the passage. Between the mid-16th and mid-17th centuries, chimney stacks were inserted into the hall and parlour, and the hall and passage were floored over, probably in more than one building phase. By the mid-17th century, the hall had become the kitchen. The front porch was added in the early to mid-17th century. The rear service block is likely 17th century, though possibly 19th century with reused beams. The inner room dairy was added at the end of the hall around 1713–1719, as confirmed by datestones on the chimney stack.

The exterior features an irregular 2:1:1-window front of circa 1985 casements with glazing bars, the first-floor windows rising into the eaves. The passage front doorway sits right of centre behind the early to mid-17th-century porch, which was refurbished and raised in height around 1985. The porch retains its outer arch containing a 17th-century oak door with moulded frame, moved forward from the original passage doorway position, and has a hipped roof. The left (west) gable displays Hamstone ashlar shaped kneelers and coping. Near the top of the gable is a Hamstone plaque inscribed "RN" (for Robert Newbury) 1713, with another plaque in the chimney shaft inscribed "R and M N" 1719. The east end, including the rear block, contains a couple of 19th-century or earlier casement windows with rectangular panes of leaded glass. Before the 1985 renovation, an oculus window of Hamstone ashlar, blocked by the first-floor structure, stood near the top of this end; it was removed circa 1985 and now lies in the rear courtyard.

The interior was thoroughly modernised circa 1985 but retains its 16th, 17th and early 18th-century structure. The inner room dairy section, dating from circa 1713–1719, is spanned by a roughly chamfered axial beam carrying the first floor. Its first-floor fireplace is blocked. The roof above is carried on an early 18th-century A-frame truss with X-apex. A solid crosswall separates the inner room from the hall.

The hall features a large fireplace with Beerstone ashlar jambs and a chamfered oak lintel, incorporating an oven whose housing projects into the passage. Alongside, a blocked opening at hearth level passes through the back of the fireplace into the passage, believed to be part of a walk-in curing chamber that once projected into the passage beside the oven. The hall's ceiling comprises a 4-panel arrangement of intersecting beams with deep chamfers. A timber-framed oak stair, probably late 17th century, stands in the hall. Along the lower side of the passage runs an oak plank-and-muntin screen, its back end cut through for a 19th-century doorway to a staircase which also cuts through the rear end of the parlour crossbeam.

The parlour was refurbished in the 19th century. Its crossbeam is boxed in, and its fireplace features Beerstone ashlar jambs and a chamfered oak lintel, part of which has been cut away to accommodate a 19th-century cupboard.

The rear service block contains two 17th-century axial beams which differ from one another. Both are chamfered; one has step stops and the other has scroll stops.

The original roof structure survives over the hall, passage and parlour. It spans 4 bays and comprises 5 side-pegged jointed cruck trusses with single sets of curving windbraces. The 3 hall trusses have chamfered arch braces. All are smoke-blackened from the original open-hearth fire. The truss over the lower side of the passage is closed, with sooting visible on the hall side only.

The front garden is enclosed by a probably 19th-century stone rubble wall with Hamstone ashlar coping. It projects forward from the left end of the front as a tall wall, then returns across the front of the garden as a low wall which ramps down following the slope of the land.

Before the circa 1985 renovation, the farmhouse apparently contained notable late 17th to early 18th-century joinery, including a cupboard dated 1691.