Town Living Farmhouse

This is a farmhouse, probably dating to the early 16th century, with significant alterations in the late 16th and 17th centuries. Constructed with plastered cob on rubble footings, it features stone rubble stacks with plastered 19th or 20th-century brick chimney stacks and a thatched roof. Originally a 3-room-and-through-passage plan house facing south-east, it adjoins No. 1 Withy Windle Cottages to the south-west. Both the inner and service end rooms have rear lateral stacks, while the hall has a front lateral stack. A 20th-century staircase now blocks the rear of the passage. The house is now two storeys high. The front elevation has a regular but asymmetrical appearance with a late 19th to early 20th-century arrangement of four-pane casement windows. Inserted French windows are present in the former inner room at the left end, and a doorway to the former through-passage is located to the right of centre, with a matching door and side lights from the late 19th to early 20th century. A late 19th-century verandah with a glass monopitch roof supported on cast-iron posts extends across the front. The roof is hipped on the right side and gable-ended on the left, joining the roof of No. 1 Withy Windle Cottages.

The interior retains good features, although much of the 16th and 17th-century fabric is concealed behind 20th-century plasterboard. Remnants of the original early 16th-century roof are visible in the roofspace over the hall and inner rooms, consisting of three bays with cambered collars, likely jointed cruck construction, although the lower parts are hidden on the first floor. The surviving roof structure and original thatch on the rear side are heavily sooted, indicating that the early 16th-century house was originally divided by low partition screens and heated by an open hearth. During the late 16th century, the hall-inner room truss was closed, and a large crosswall was inserted, blackened by smoke only on the hall side. The entire roof was raised in the 19th century. The inner room features a floor inserted in the late 16th century; the axial beam is deeply chamfered with step stops, and rests on posts with moulded jowled heads. A small, plain rubble fireplace with an oak lintel is likely from the 18th century. In the hall, a 17th-century fireplace with a volcanic stone surround and an oak lintel, with a soffit-chamfered edge and straight-cut stops, is present. The hall also has an early 17th-century crossbeam floor with a fillet-ogee moulding and late step stops. The service room was refurbished in the late 17th to early 18th century and features a plainly finished crossbeam and a substantial rubble fireplace with a brick side oven and a plain oak lintel. All partitions appear to be from the 16th or 17th century, but are now clad in 20th-century plasterboard. The farmhouse is well-preserved and forms an attractive group with the adjoining Nos. 1 and 2 Withy Windle Cottages.