Stone Ash

This is a house, originally a farmhouse, dating to the early to mid 16th century. It has seen alterations in the late 16th and 17th centuries, a 19th-century extension, and 20th-century modernisation. The construction is a mix of plastered cob and rubble, volcanic rubble, and 19th-century brick stacks, with a thatched roof. The building was originally a 3-room-and-cross-or-through-passage plan house facing southwest, with a former service room on the northwest end and a single room addition on the right end. A central stack is located at the lower end of the hall, and a second stack serves the first floor of the extension. A stair block lies behind the former inner room. The house is now two stories throughout. The front has an irregular five-window arrangement of 20th-century casement windows, most of which lack glazing bars. The thatch extends over a dormer window on the left end, and the windows on the right end are set forward in a 20th-century bay. There are 20th-century glazed doors, one to the former service room and one with a 20th-century hipped and slate roofed porch to the former inner room. A two-light window to the right of the service room door appears to block a former doorway. The roof is gable-ended to the right and hipped to the left. The hall stack retains its original volcanic stone chimney shaft, which was extended with 19th-century brick.

The interior is of a complex, multi-phase structure. The oldest part is the early to mid-16th-century roof above the hall, which features a side-pegged jointed cruck truss with threaded purlins, some common rafters, and pegged batons. The smoke-blackening on the roof indicates the hall was open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. The thick cob crosswall between the hall and inner room suggests that the inner room was added later. A late 16th to early 17th-century axial beam in this area is deeply chamfered with run-out stops. The hall fireplace dates to the mid to late 17th century, with volcanic rubble sides, an oak lintel, chamfered with straight cut stops, and an inserted brick oven. The hall was floored around this time. The window embrasures and blocked doorway features crossbeams and lintels that are ovolo-moulded with scroll-nick stops, suggesting it once had a lobby entrance plan. The service room has a late 16th to early 17th-century chamfered and step-stopped crossbeam but was extended, reroofed, and converted to agricultural use in the 18th century, and was partially floored until 20th-century modernization. The roof here has plain A frames with pegged lap-jointed collars. When the rear wall was stripped around 1970, no evidence was found of a rear passage door. It is an unusual farmhouse displaying an interesting development history.