Higher Wotton Farmhouse

Higher Wotton Farmhouse is a mid-to-late 16th-century farmhouse with alterations and extensions from the 17th century and modernization in the late 19th century. It is constructed of plastered cob on rubble footings, with stone rubble stacks—one original stone chimney shaft and others with 19th-century brick tops—beneath an asbestos-tile roof, formerly thatched. The original plan consisted of a three-room-and-through-passage house facing south, with an inner room at the west end. A 17th-century block extends at a right angle behind the hall and inner room, with a 19th-century extension to the service room.

The front has an irregular six-window arrangement of contemporary 20th-century large-pane casements with glazing bars. The hall and inner room have a regular three-window arrangement, with gables rising from the eaves over the first-floor windows. The passage features an early 20th-century partly-glazed front door, shielded by a contemporary monopitch hood with an asbestos-tile roof on curving brackets. A secondary door is set within a large 20th-century open-sided porch with a gabled and asbestos-tile roof. The roof is gable-ended to the left and hipped to the right. A surviving original volcanic ashlar chimney shaft with coping is present on the hall stack. The roofline drops twice from left to right. The rear block has a 19th-century casement with glazing bars on its inner side, and its roof is hipped at one end.

Interior features are largely the result of 19th-century modernization, but the original plan remains intact, and 16th and 17th-century features likely survive beneath later plaster. All fireplaces are blocked. Large-framed crosswalls are visible in the roof space at either end of the hall. A blocked granite jamb of the hall fireplace is partially exposed in a cupboard to the left, while another cupboard to the right contains the remains of stairs leading to a passage chamber, which originally jettied into the open hall alongside the chimney breast. A round-headed alcove in the rear wall may have once been the blocked door to a projecting newel stair turret (now replaced by a straight flight stair), with a similar round-headed arch on the first floor connecting the stair head to the inner room chamber. The hall was floored in the mid-17th century with a soffit-chamfered crossbeam featuring run-out stops. The service room has a late 17th-to-early 18th-century plain-chamfered crossbeam, and the blocked fireplace’s oven projection is visible in the 19th-century extension. The rear block has a late 17th-century soffit-chamfered crossbeam with straight-cut stops. The original roof structure remains intact over the passage, hall, and inner room, consisting of side-pegged jointed cruck trusses. Large-framed closed trusses, with hazel wattling visible, are at either end of the hall, and an open truss over the hall has a cambered collar. An early 18th-century A-frame truss over the service room has a pegged lap-jointed collar and X-apex. A plaster plaque, reportedly dated 1715, was removed from over the front passage door within living memory. Higher Wotton is located within a distinct medieval estate.