Pirzwell Lodge

Pirzwell Lodge is a detached house, likely dating from the late 16th or early 17th century, and significantly altered in the 20th century. The walls are constructed of roughcast cob on stone footings, with brick gable walls. A later 20th-century wing is built of random rubble masonry, and the roof is slate. The original plan was probably a three-room, cross-passage house, although the service wing has been dismantled. The main hall was initially open to the roof, later divided from the inner room by a closed truss. A stone stack on the inner room’s end was rebuilt, and an internal lateral rear stack with a brick shaft warms the hall. The house is two storeys high. The 20th-century wing obscures much of the front elevation, but includes a stone porch and a pair of two-light casement windows on each floor. Both ends of the front have late 20th-century windows, and one end has a porch. The rear elevation has a single door and a 20th-century casement window. Internally, a surviving jointed cruck roof truss, smoke-blackened on the hall side, is morticed and side-pegged (an Alcock type F2), and originally closed with wattle and plaster. A 17th-century plank and muntin screen is morticed into the truss, with ovolo-moulded muntins stopped approximately 15 inches above the ground floor. Two shaped brackets attached to the head beam originally supported an ovolo-moulded lintel, now concealed.