Barnfield Farmhouse

Barnfield Farmhouse

A farmhouse of early or mid-16th-century origin with major later 16th- and 17th-century improvements, refurbished with an extension in the early or mid-19th century and modernised around 1980. The house is constructed of plastered local stone rubble, possibly with cob in parts, with stone rubble stacks topped with 19th-century brick. The roof is thatch, with slate covering the rear outshots.

The building follows a 4-room-and-through-passage plan facing north, built down the hillslope. The uphill end (east) contains a parlour with a gable-end stack and a winder stair rising alongside. Next to it is the passage with a now-blocked rear doorway, beyond which lies the hall with an axial stack backing onto the passage. To the right of the hall is a small unheated inner room, probably a former dairy or buttery, and another unheated room at the downhill right (west) end, which is a 19th-century extension. The historic core comprises the original 3-room-and-through-passage section. The house originally functioned as an open hall house heated by an open hearth fire, though the exact original layout cannot be determined with certainty. The inner room may have been two storeys from the beginning. The hall fireplace was added in the mid or late 16th century. The parlour was given a chimneystack and floored over in the late 16th or early 17th century, and the hall was floored over in the mid-17th century, at which point it was downgraded to a kitchen. The building is 2 storeys throughout, with a basement to the 19th-century extension at the west end. There is a secondary woodshed on the left (east) end and a secondary outshot to the rear of the parlour.

The irregular 4-window front features mostly 19th- and 20th-century casements with glazing bars, with the first-floor examples rising a short distance into the eaves. The passage front doorway is flanked by 20-pane sashes, with more 20-pane sashes to the rear, most being horned 20th-century replacements though some are 19th-century. A double 16-pane sash occupies the ground floor at the right end of the front, also a 20th-century replacement. The passage front doorway is left of centre and contains a 20th-century door assembled from pieces of a 16th- or 17th-century plank-and-muntin screen, set behind a probably 19th-century stone rubble porch with a monopitch thatch roof. The front has been partly replastered in the 20th century, but surviving 19th-century plaster is lightly incised as ashlar, and the right-end corner and one first-floor window feature stucco quoins. The main roof is half-hipped to the right and gable-ended to the left.

The interior shows remains of a close-studded partition screen on the left side of the passage. The parlour contains a limestone ashlar fireplace with a chamfered oak lintel and a plain chamfered axial beam. The hall features a large stone fireplace with a chamfered oak lintel and an oven. The mid-to-late 17th-century crossbeam here has deep chamfers with bar run-out stops. At the upper end (actually downhill) stands a full-height crosswall, an oak plank-and-muntin screen in the hall, and large framing above. The inner room has a chamfered axial beam. On the first floor, an oak Tudor arch doorway opens off the landing at the head of the hall stair, leading to the chamber over the passage. The roof over the parlour is a 20th-century replacement, but the roof over the passage and hall is original, carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses which are smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The roofspace over the inner room is inaccessible. The 19th-century extension has plain carpentry detail.