Ford Farmhouse

Ford Farmhouse is a mid-17th century farmhouse with a mid-19th century kitchen extension, situated in Chawleigh. The construction uses plastered cob on rubble footings, with stone rubble stacks featuring 19th-century brick chimney shafts and a thatched roof. The original plan comprised two rooms facing south, with a central entrance hall and a rear staircase. The east room features a large projecting end stack, while the west room has a projecting rear lateral stack. A single-story kitchen block adjoins the rear of the east room at a right angle, with its own lateral stack. A small dairy or store room block is attached to the right end. A two-story porch is located at the front.

The front facade has a balanced, though not symmetrical, 2:1:2 window arrangement, with the first-floor window arrangement largely intact. The windows have oak frames and flat-faced mullions and upper transoms, all with shallow internal ogee mouldings. Each end features a three-light window. A two-light window is located to the right of the porch, and similar two-light windows on the porch and to the left have been replaced with 19th-century casements. All ground floor windows are 19th and 20th-century casements, though the window to the left of the doorway is largely original, missing only the mullion. The central doorway is 19th-century, while the two-story porch is original to the 17th century. The first-floor room, with its hipped roof, is supported on heavy turned oak posts, now boxed in at the bottom. A plain oak wall plate runs across the front, and the roof has gable ends. To the right, the low dairy/store room is slightly recessed, featuring a front mounting block, a 20th-century casement, and a gable-ended roof. The kitchen block is also gable-ended with a large 20th-century casement in the end wall. Both rear chimney shafts are tall.

The interior is largely original. The right ground floor room’s crossbeam soffit is ovolo-moulded with scroll stops. The large fireplace is blocked. Adjacent to it is a blocked window retaining its original oak two-light frame. Below this is a small contemporary cupboard with panelled doors hung on butterfly hinges. The window embrasure has been converted to a cupboard with panelled doors on 18th-century H-hinges. A large cupboard built into the thickness of the rear wall has panelled doors on both butterfly and H-hinges. The left room has no exposed carpentry, and the fireplace is blocked. On the first floor, original fireplaces are blocked. The original roof is composed of A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars. The kitchen block contains a large blocked fireplace and a roof of 19th-century king post trusses. The kitchen is possibly a 19th-century rebuild of the original, and the fireplace may be 17th-century. The farmhouse is well-preserved and its picturesque elevation is enhanced by a group of adjoining and nearby farm buildings.