Stockers Farmhouse

Stockers Farmhouse

Farmhouse dating from the early to mid 16th century, with major improvements made in the later 16th and 17th centuries. The service end was enlarged in the 18th century, and the building has undergone some 19th and 20th century modernisation. The walls are plastered and colour-washed, constructed mostly of local stone and flint rubble with some cob. Stone rubble stacks are topped with 19th and 20th century brick. The roof is thatched, though part has been replaced with corrugated iron.

The house is built across the hillslope facing east, and follows a 4-room-and-through-passage plan. At the north end is a room with a gable-end stack, currently used as a sitting room. Between it and the passage is an unheated room now serving as the kitchen. On the other side of the passage lies the former hall with its stack backing onto the passage and a newel stair rising to the front. The south end room, formerly an inner room, has a gable-end stack.

The building has a long and complex structural history. The original early to mid 16th century house occupied only the former hall, passage and present kitchen. It was open to the roof, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire, likely comprising a 2-room-and-through-passage arrangement. The hall fireplace was probably added in the mid to late 16th century. In the early 17th century an inner room was added. By the mid 17th century the farmhouse had been reorganised with an inner room kitchen, the hall functioning as a parlour, and the service end room serving as a dairy or buttery. In the 18th century the northern end was added to the dairy or buttery as a stable or agricultural outhouse, and was brought into domestic use around 1960-70.

The house is two storeys with secondary outshots to the rear of the southern end, passage, hall and inner room kitchen. The irregular 4-window front features mostly 19th and 20th century casements with glazing bars. The half dormer left of centre contains an oak flat-faced mullion window, possibly as old as the 18th century, with rectangular panes of leaded glass. The section left of the passage doorway breaks forward slightly from the rest of the front. The passage front doorway is roughly central and contains a 20th century door. A secondary doorway towards the left end leads into the inner room kitchen and contains a 19th century plank door. The main roof is gable-ended; the right end was half-hipped before the stack was inserted here.

Interior features include a passage rear doorway with what appears to be a plastered over jamb of a shoulder-headed doorway, possibly dating to the early to mid 16th century. A late 16th to early 17th century oak crank-headed doorframe from the passage is chamfered with straight cut stops. The fireplace here is blocked by a 19th century fireplace. The partition between hall and inner room kitchen appears to be a plastered oak plank-and-muntin screen. The inner room kitchen crossbeams have deep chamfers and step stops. The kitchen fireplace is blocked, though its large size and projecting oven housing are evident. Below the passage, the former dairy or buttery (now kitchen) has a 20th century replacement crossbeam, and the end room (now sitting room) has roughly-chamfered crossbeams.

On the first floor, the size of the original house is defined by hip crucks. The solid end walls into which they were set have been replaced by timber-framed crosswalls with cruck posts now resting on crossbeams. The roof space is inaccessible, though the farmer reports that roof timbers and thatch between the hip crucks are heavily sooted from the open hearth fire. Any intermediate truss is buried in the crosswall between hall and passage chambers. The inner room roof is carried on a side-pegged jointed cruck truss, and the service end extension roof is carried on A-frame trusses.

Much of the evidence for the building's development through the 16th and 17th centuries is hidden behind 19th and 20th century plaster. The house is important because it retains the remains of a small late medieval structure, a rare survival, and appears to preserve a great deal of 16th and 17th century carpentry and other details intact beneath later alterations.