Lower Burston Farmhouse

Lower Burston Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the early to mid 17th century, with significant alterations in the late 16th and 17th centuries, an addition in the 17th century, and modernization in the late 19th century. The walls are plastered cob on rubble footings, with stone rubble and cob stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brick. The roof is slate, originally thatched. Initially a three-room-and-through-passage plan, it originally faced south with an unheated inner room at the left (west) end. The hall has a projecting rear lateral stack. In the 17th century, the service end was rebuilt and enlarged to two rooms; the first has an axial stack backing onto the through passage, and the second an end kitchen stack with an oven projection. The building has an irregular four-window front. The left (inner room) end is blind. A roughly central front passage doorway contains a wide, late 19th-century panelled door, flanked by tripartite late 19th-century sashes with central, horned 4-pane sashes. Above these are contemporary horned 6-pane sashes, and above the door a similar 4-pane sash. A wide 20th-century casement without glazing bars is located at the right-hand end, with a late 19th-century casement with glazing bars above. The roof level drops from left to right on the lower side of the passage. The roof is half-hipped to the left and gable-ended to the right. Similar late 19th-century windows are found on the rear elevation.

The interior retains the original layout, with intact 16th and 17th-century features revealed by the late 19th-century modernization. Internal crosswalls are cob. All fireplaces are blocked by 19th and 20th-century grates. The kitchen (second service end room) has a 17th-century axial beam, with a soffit-chamfered edge having scroll stops. The first service end room has a plastered-over crossbeam. The hall has an axial beam and half-beams from the mid-17th-century flooring of the originally open hall, also soffit-chamfered with unusually elaborate bar-scroll-step stops. The inner room contains a massive soffit-chamfered and run-out-stopped axial beam, likely dating from the late 17th to early 18th century. The roof is only partially accessible. The roof over the two service end rooms is 17th century and supported by an uncollared jointed cruck truss (the elbow is papered over) and threaded purlins. The hall has a two-bay roof carried on a jointed cruck truss, with the elbow joint also papered over; while the truss itself is not visible, the associated roof structure over the passage chamber is. This structure is smoke-blackened, indicating that it is from the early to mid-16th century and that the hall was then open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire.