Buehills Farmhouse

Buehills Farmhouse, Holcombe Rogus

Farmhouse dating from the mid 16th century with major improvements in the later 16th and 17th centuries, and major late 19th-century modernisation involving partial internal rearrangement and a new service extension. The building is constructed of plastered stone rubble with sections of cob, with stone rubble chimney stacks (the hall stack being stone rubble with a stone rubble chimneyshaft, whilst the rest are topped with 19th and 20th-century brick). The roof is slated, formerly thatched.

The house is oriented to face south-west and follows a long building plan with six rooms and a through-passage. At the north-western end is the inner room with a projecting rear lateral stack. The hall, which is smaller than originally, also has a projecting rear lateral stack. A new main stair was inserted into the lower end in the 19th century. Between this stair and the passage is a small unheated room, probably originally a dairy. Below the passage is a kitchen with a large axial stack backing onto the fifth room at the right end. The fifth and sixth rooms form a late 19th-century service extension with a gable-end stack, and this extension includes a cellar beneath.

The original mid 16th-century house had a four-room-and-through-passage plan, with only the inner room possessing a chamber above it at that time. The remainder of the house was open to the roof and divided by low partitions, being heated by an open hearth fire which blackened the roof timbers with soot. Through the later 16th and 17th centuries, chimneyshafts were progressively inserted and the whole house was gradually floored over. The service end was rebuilt as a kitchen in the mid 17th century.

The house is two storeys throughout. The exterior features an irregular four-window front with 19th-century casements with glazing bars, all fitted with 19th-century flat stucco eared architraves; the service extension has another similar window with a segmental arch over. The front doorway, positioned near the centre, contains a 19th-century six-panel door within a gabled porch. This doorway was inserted into the former hall position. The original passage front doorway is now blocked. The roof is gable-ended and drops in level from the main house to the extension. The passage rear doorway features a solid oak frame beneath 19th or 20th-century architraves, with a 20th-century door. A stone mounting block stands to the left.

The interior is largely the result of 19th-century modernisation, though in the main block the original layout is well-preserved, with sufficient exposed 16th and 17th-century carpentry to indicate the modernisation was essentially superficial. No carpentry detail is exposed in the inner room and hall, and both fireplaces are blocked by 19th-century grates. In the small dairy, a small section of a 16th or 17th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen survives, forming a corridor between the passage and hall. The lower passage side reveals a section of a late 16th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen containing a Tudor arch doorway, now exposed in the kitchen. The kitchen contains a large fireplace with a replacement oak lintel, with the blocked doorway of a disused oven at the back and a 19th-century cloam oven to the left. The ceiling beams here are an unusual arrangement of soffit-chamfered beams containing variously step, roll and scroll stops. Another oak plank-and-muntin screen appears on the first floor above the passage lower screen. The main block roof is carried on a series of side-pegged jointed crucks. The partition between the hall and inner room chambers is not a closed truss but is original, as evidenced by the clean condition on the inner room side and roof structure beyond, whilst the hall side and rest of the roof remain smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. Two late 16th or 17th-century oak-framed partitions visible in the roofspace are positioned either side of the 19th-century stairwell.