Ford Farmhouse

Ford Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the early to mid 16th century, with significant alterations in the later 16th and 17th centuries, and modernisation around 1960. The walls are plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble stacks topped with 20th-century brick, and a concrete tile roof that was formerly thatched.

Originally, the farmhouse had a 3-room-and-through-passage plan, facing south-east and built down a gentle hillslope. A projecting gable-end stack with a winder stair is located at the uphill end, originally serving a parlour room. A large axial stack backs onto the former passage, which originally served the hall. The lower partition of the passage has been removed, merging the passage with a small, unheated service room, likely a dairy. The hall originally had an open roof and an open hearth fire; a low partition screen may have originally divided the hall. The hall fireplace was likely inserted in the mid to late 16th century. The parlour end was rebuilt, possibly enlarged, in the early 17th century, and the hall was floored over at the same time, becoming a kitchen. A 20th-century rear extension has been added to the rear of the property.

The exterior presents an irregular 4-window front with modern casement windows, those on the first floor being iron-framed without glazing bars. A modern plank door is set behind a contemporary gabled porch, placed to the left of centre. The original passage doorway has been blocked and replaced with a window, though stone steps remain below it. The roof is gable-ended to the left and half-hipped to the right.

Inside, the parlour and hall are separated by an oak-framed partition with a shoulder-headed doorway. Both rooms feature crossbeams with deep, hollow-chamfered soffits and run-out stops. The hall fireplace is blocked. The parlour has a stone rubble fireplace with a soffit-chamfered oak lintel. The remains of a lower passage partition, originally an oak plank-and-muntin screen, are visible. On the first floor, an oak Tudor arch leads from the main stair landing to the hall bedchamber. The roof was replaced around 1960, except for one side-pegged jointed cruck truss, which retains smoke-blackening from the original open hearth fire.