Barton Lands Farmhouse

Barton Lands Farmhouse

This farmhouse, probably dating from the late 15th century with major improvements in the 16th and 17th centuries, was thoroughly modernised around 1980. It is built of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble stacks topped with 20th-century brick, and has a thatch roof.

The house follows a 3-room-and-through-passage plan, built across a gentle hillslope and facing south. At the east end is a service kitchen with a gable-end stack and a projecting curing chamber alongside. Around 1980 the passage rear doorway was blocked and the lower passage partition removed to unite the passage and kitchen. The hall contains an axial stack that backs onto the former passage, and the upper hall partition has been removed to unite the former hall and inner room, which remains unheated. The present stairs, rising from the passage along the rear wall of the hall, are 20th-century work.

The late 15th-century house was originally open to the roof from end to end and heated by an open hearth fire. It may originally have been smaller, as evidence of a second phase of smoke-blackened roof survives. The inner room was floored first, and the hall fireplace was inserted into the open hall during the mid or late 16th century. The hall itself was floored in the early 17th century. The service end was rebuilt as a kitchen in the mid 17th century. The house is 2 storeys with an outshot to the rear, which was rebuilt in the 20th century.

The exterior displays an irregular 3-window front of circa 1980 casements with glazing bars, those on the first floor rising slightly into the eaves. The passage front doorway, positioned right of centre, contains a circa 1980 door behind a contemporary thatch-roofed porch. The roof is gable-ended.

The interior contains several notable features. The former inner room has an axial beam with deep hollow chamfers and lambstongue stops. The hall has three soffit-chamfered and step-stopped axial beams. The large fireplace here is of red sandstone ashlar with a soffit-chamfered oak lintel bearing some ancient graffiti, including initials in patterns resembling merchant's marks. The oven is 19th-century. The doorway from hall to passage is an oak Tudor arch. The kitchen crossbeam is soffit-chamfered with step stops. The massive kitchen fireplace has a soffit-chamfered oak lintel which continues further left across the front of a very well-preserved walk-in curing chamber. No early carpentry is visible on the first floor apart from the roof structure.

The roof contains three phases, all carried on side-pegged jointed crucks. Only the earliest two phases are smoke-blackened from the open hearth fire. The earliest truss, now closed by the partition between the hall and inner room chambers, has a saddle and originally supported a square set ridge (Alcock's apex type C). A disused hip cruck stands at this end. The second phase of roof spans the hall; the truss here has a small triangular yoke and a diagonal ridge (Alcock's apex type L2), and the whole roof structure including common rafters and the underside of the thatch is sooted. The clean 17th-century truss over the kitchen is of conventional construction.

This is a notable farmhouse, distinguished by its unusually early roof truss and a remarkably well-preserved curing chamber.