Mouse Hole Farmhouse

Farmhouse. Dating from the early to mid 17th century, with possible earlier core, and incorporating 19th-century alterations and modernisation in 1987. The house is constructed of plastered cob and local stone rubble, with stacks of cob or stone rubble topped with 20th-century brick, and has a thatched roof. The plan is a 5-room layout, facing southwest. The right-hand end comprises the parlour and the adjacent hall or dining room. Between these rooms is an axial stack serving back-to-back fireplaces, with a lobby entrance positioned in front of the stack. To the left of the hall/dining room is an unheated dairy or buttery, followed by the kitchen with an axial stack backing onto the dairy/buttery, and finally, an unheated service room at the left end. Due to the limitations of the survey, the full internal development of the house could not be ascertained, but it appears to be a single-phase early 17th-century house, likely either a lobby entrance plan or a central service room plan. The exterior presents an irregular 4-window front, with additional ground-floor windows to the left service room, all late 19th and 20th-century casements, some without glazing bars. Both front doorways feature late 19th to early 20th-century plank doors, the right-hand one behind a contemporary thatched porch. The roof is hipped at both ends. Interior inspection was limited, but early to mid 17th-century carpentry detail was observed in the kitchen and the hall/dining room. These rooms both contain stone rubble fireplaces with cranked and chamfered oak lintels. The kitchen features a chamfered axial beam, and the dining room has a chamfered and scroll-stopped crossbeam. Further 17th-century carpentry is suspected.