Thornlands Farmhouse

Thornlands Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the mid-17th century, with possible earlier origins, and a 19th-century dairy extension. The entire building was substantially modernised around 1980. It is constructed of plastered stone rubble, with some cob, and has a slate roof, formerly thatched. An extension is of exposed stone rubble, with stone rubble stacks and plastered chimney shafts.

The building has an L-shaped layout. The main block, facing north-west, originally comprised three rooms. To the left is an unheated room, followed by a hall/parlour with an axial stack backing onto the adjacent kitchen. The kitchen is at the right end and features a large gable-end stack. A small, projecting one-room block at the left-hand end is original and now contains 20th-century stairs; it is believed to have been the original stair block. A two-room dairy block, dated to the 19th century, juts out at right angles to the right end of the main block. Around 1980, a corridor was constructed across the front of the farmhouse, connecting the stair block and the dairy. The main farmhouse appears to be of a single build. The house is two stories high with an irregular 1:2:1 window front featuring casements set in around 1980, with diamond patterns of leaded glass. A porch and front doorway, dating from circa 1980, are centrally located on the corridor. The main roof is gable-ended, as is the dairy roof. Similar windows are found at the rear, and the left-hand end incorporates a 1980 bay window, with the entire wall rebuilt at that time.

The 1980 modernisation was thorough, but it preserved many original features, including a flagstone floor in the kitchen and most of the oak lintels over the windows. The unheated left-hand room has a plain soffit-chamfered crossbeam. The hall has soffit-chamfered crossbeams with reversed ogee-scroll stops. The fireplace here has a replacement oak lintel. The kitchen features a large fireplace with a curving soffit-chamfered oak lintel, and the oven housing projects into the room. An alcove to the right might have been used as a walk-in curing chamber. The roof structure was not inspected, but the scantling of the bases of the straight principals suggest the presence of 17th-century A-frame trusses.