Combeshead Farmhouse

Combeshead Farmhouse is a mid-17th century farmhouse that underwent significant refurbishment and extensions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is constructed of plastered local stone rubble, with stone rubble stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brick, and a coated slate roof, originally thatched, with corrugated iron to a rear outshot. The farmhouse is built across a gentle hillside, overlooking the farm courtyard and has a six-room plan facing west-northwest. A small, unheated room is positioned at the north end, adjacent to a parlour with an axial stack backing onto the unheated room. The parlour is separated from the former kitchen by a through-passage, which is itself backed by another unheated room, originally likely a dairy or buttery. To the south end are two small, unheated service rooms with separate external doorways, used historically as a woodstore, cellar, workshop, and toolstore. These rooms, along with the unheated room at the other end, were added to the original 17th-century three-room-and-through-passage plan during the late 18th and early 19th century.

The farmhouse is two storeys high. The front elevation has an irregular five-window arrangement, featuring various 20th-century casements, many without glazing bars. Four front doorways are present; the passage front doorway, left of centre, has a late 19th-century part-glazed four-panel door behind a 20th-century porch with a monopitch roof. A secondary doorway provides access to the present kitchen (the former dairy/buttery), featuring a late 19th-century plank door behind another 20th-century porch. The two service rooms at the right end also have 19th-century plank doors. The roof is gable-ended to the right and hipped to the left.

The interior largely reflects the late 18th and early 19th-century refurbishment and later modernisations, but the original 17th-century structure appears to be well-preserved. The rooms on either side of the through-passage, the former kitchen and parlour, both retain chamfered crossbeams with scroll stops. Both fireplaces are blocked, but the former kitchen fireplace has its chamfered oak lintel exposed. The roof throughout is from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, consisting of a series of A-frame trusses with pegged and spiked lap-jointed collars and X-apexes.