Helmore

Helmore is a detached house, originally a farmhouse, dating to the late 16th or early 17th century. It is constructed of random rubble sandstone and volcanic trap to the rear, cob with a stone footing to the front, and is plastered with a half-hipped and gabled-end roof. Historically, the house comprised three rooms with a through-passage plan, with a higher-status room to the left of the passage. A lower-status room cross wing was likely added in the 19th century. The lower end appears to have been rebuilt or newly constructed, evidenced by a vertical masonry joint and quoining to the right of a blocked passage doorway. A further front wing has been added forward of the hall.

The house originally had an end stack, now axial, heating the lower end. Another axial stack once backed onto the hall, but is now invisible externally. The building is two storeys throughout. The front, which faces the garden, features 20th-century casement windows of 2 or 3 lights: three to the first floor of the main range, two to the ground floor, and one to each floor of the wings, with a 4-light window to the inner face of the lower end wing. There are doors to a small, intervening lean-to and to the extreme left-hand side. The rear, facing the roadside, has 19th-century casement windows: one on the first floor with 4 lights, one with 3, and on the ground floor, one with 3 lights, two with 4, and one with 5, all with 3 panes per light.

Inside, the parlour is now divided by a 20th-century axial wall but retains intersecting beams creating an intersecting grid of 4 squares. The hall has three axial beams, chamfered, and the fireplace lintel is also chamfered with hollow step stops. A plank and muntin screen, chamfered with carpenter's mitres and step stops, and a chamfered doorway arch, remains in the passage. The lower end has one deeply chamfered cross beam, and a fireplace with a replaced lintel. The lower end cross wing contains two rooms; the rear room was formerly a dairy and has a blocked fireplace. The roof is greatly altered, with one truss crossed and mortised at the apex, pegged. The rest of the roof appears later, and the cross wing has a 19th-century A-frame roof.