Rollshayes Farmhouse Including Front Boundary Walls

Rollshayes Farmhouse, including front boundary walls, is a farmhouse dated 1877, although it is likely to have origins in the 16th or 17th century. The building is constructed from local stone and flint rubble, with stone rubble stacks. One stack has a limestone ashlar chimneyshaft, while the others are topped with 20th-century brick. The roof is thatched. The farmhouse has an L-shaped plan, with the main block built down a gentle hillslope and originally planned around a three-room-and-through-passage layout, although there is no physical evidence of earlier fabric. A small, unheated cellar or woodstore is located at the south-east end, next to a parlour with an axial stack backing onto the passage. At the north-west end is a dining room with a gable-end stack. A straight-flight staircase rises from the back of the passage, behind the parlour, in a projecting stair turret. A two-room-plan service block projects at a right angle to the rear of the dining room, containing an unheated dairy, followed by a kitchen with a gable-end stack. A secondary outshot is likely on the angle of the two wings behind the passage. The farmhouse is two storeys high. The front elevation has a regular, though not symmetrical, appearance with four windows of original casement design featuring rectangular panes of leaded glass. Similar windows are present to the rear and in the rear block, with only a few replacements; the dairy and woodstore/cellar windows remain unglazed. The passage front doorway has a 20th-century flat concrete architrave, fitted with a 20th-century studded plank door. An original front door serves the woodstore/cellar. The roof is half-hipped to the right and gable-ended to the left, with shaped kneelers and coping. The parlour stack chimneyshaft is limestone ashlar and inscribed with the date 1887. The interior retains much original, late 19th-century joinery detail. Although the layout suggests a 16th or 17th century farmhouse, no earlier fabric has been found. A narrow strip of ground across the front is enclosed by a late 19th-century low stone rubble wall. The farmhouse has seen surprisingly little alteration since its construction.