Holm Farmhouse

Holm Farmhouse is a small farmhouse dating to the late 16th and early 17th centuries, with modernisations in the late 19th century and around 1960. The main structure is predominantly plastered cob on rubble footings, with some plastered local stone rubble; stone rubble stacks are topped with 20th-century brick, and the roof is thatched. It is an L-shaped building. The original two-room plan of the main block faces south-east and likely originally included a cross-passage between the rooms, now occupied by a 19th-century staircase. The larger room on the left (south-western) side has an axial stack backing onto the former passage. A kitchen block, at a right angle, sits to the rear of the passage and the unheated room to the right, with an end stack. The main door was moved to the rear block, in the angle of the two wings, in the 19th century. The building is two storeys high.

The front elevation has an irregular three-window arrangement of 20th-century casements with glazing bars and 20th-century French windows; the window to the right of centre is believed to block the original doorway. The roof is hipped at each end, and the kitchen range has a gable end. The present main doorway is late 19th century.

The left front room, finished to a high standard, was likely the parlour. It features a late 16th- to early 17th-century stone fireplace with an oak lintel having a rich soffit-moulding and elaborate runout stops. A recess to the right of the fireplace marks the site of the original stairs. A two-bay ceiling is supported by a late 16th- to early 17th-century crossbeam of high quality, richly moulded with a series of small, close-spaced carved crescents along its soffit. This beam is unstopped, with similarly moulded half-beams around the walls acting as a deep cornice. The crossbeam in the room to the right is soffit-chamfered and unstopped, but the half-beam across the end wall has step stops. Part of the partition between this room and the kitchen contains a fragment of a presumably late 16th- to early 17th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen with scratch-moulded muntins, which may be reset. The kitchen appears to have been extensively rebuilt, as the crossbeam here is roughly-squared and appears to be a reused timber. It also has a plain oak lintel and a 19th-century oven. The roof is claimed by the owners to be of late 19th-century construction throughout. Despite the 19th-century alterations, the house appears complete and retains an unusual and interesting late 16th- to early 17th-century plan form.