Pennycotts Farmhouse Including Outbuildings Adjoining To West

Pennycotts Farmhouse including Outbuildings Adjoining to West

A farmhouse with adjoining store, probably dating from the early 16th century with major improvements undertaken in the later 16th and 17th centuries. The 17th-century barn extension was converted to a dairy and cider-house in the 19th century, then again to a store in the 20th century. The building was renovated circa 1970.

The main house is constructed of plastered cob on rubble footings with rubble chimney stacks topped with 20th-century brick. The roof is thatched above the house itself, though the store is covered in corrugated iron (formerly thatch).

The original plan comprised a four-room-and-through-passage arrangement facing south, with the service end room positioned at the right (east) end. An unusual small room lies between the inner room and the former end wall. A projecting newel stair turret extends to the rear of the inner room. Rear projecting lateral stacks serve the service room, while front projecting lateral stacks serve the hall and inner rooms; the latter includes a large oven projection. A 19th-century staircase blocks the rear of the passage. A long 17th-century extension to the left (west) end maintains a continuous roofline.

The building stands two storeys high. The main house frontage displays six windows of varying sizes, consisting of late 19th and 20th-century casements with glazing bars arranged irregularly. A 19th-century four-panel door with a 20th-century slate monopitch roof shelters the passage immediately to the right of the hall stack. A secondary plank door opens to the inner room, positioned to the left of the inner room stack. Both the hall and inner room stacks retain their original stocky stone rubble chimney shafts with dripcourses and coping, now extended upwards in 20th-century brick.

The outbuilding extension to the left displays irregular fenestration: three windows to the first floor and four to the ground floor, mostly 20th-century casements, some with glazing bars. A plank door towards the left end is flanked by plain unglazed windows with a loading hatch above. The roof is hipped at both ends. The rear of the extension features full-height projecting walls, presumably the former midstrey to a large barn doorway. The end room contains two wooden ventilators on the ground floor.

The interior demonstrates the building's long and complex structural development. The early 16th-century origins are evident principally in the roof. The three bays above the hall and inner room are carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses with slightly cambered and soffit-chamfered collars. The entire roof structure, including common rafters and under-thatch, is thoroughly smoke-blackened. Since the inner faces of the cob crosswalls at either end appear clean, the early 16th-century house was likely divided only by low partition screens and heated by an open hearth fire. The roof above the inner room end was rebuilt in the early-mid 17th century with the extension, while the roof above the service end room is a late 18th-early 19th-century replacement, constructed with A-frame trusses featuring pegged and bolted collars and X-apexes.

A possibly original low partition on the hall side of the passage consists of a partly restored oak plank-and-muntin screen with chamfered muntins on both sides. The hall contains a large restored late 16th-century fireplace with a small light opening on its left side. A passage chamber, built around the same period, jetties into what was then an open hall, with its first-floor crosswall incorporating a low oak plank-and-muntin screen.

The hall was floored in the early 17th century with an ogee-fillet-ovolo moulded and keeled-lozenge stopped crossbeam. The cob crosswall at the upper end of the hall includes a late 17th-century cupboard and an oak 16th-century flat-arched door with chamfered surround. The inner room features a probably 17th-century stone rubble fireplace with a plain chamfered oak lintel and an inserted brick side oven. Late 16th-century crossbeams are chamfered with step stops, accompanied by a contemporary small stone newel stair to the rear. A mid-17th-century moulded plaster cornice runs around the crossbeams. The small unheated end room is divided by a late 16th-early 17th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen, with muntins chamfered to the inner room only. The service room includes a 17th-century chamfered and late step-stopped crossbeam, and was probably extended in the late 18th-early 19th century (when the roof was rebuilt). The end beam, which was raised slightly circa 1970, is waney and unfinished. A small rubble fireplace in the rear wall has a 20th-century replacement lintel.

On the first floor, a 17th-century doorway between the passage and hall chambers retains its original plank and ledged door hung on strap hinges. The inner room end and extension incorporate a seven-bay early-mid 17th-century roof in which most of the original oak A-frame trusses with pegged dovetail lap-jointed collars survive. A large midstrey to the rear suggests the extension was originally constructed as a five-bay barn. The front wall appears to have been substantially rebuilt in the 19th century. Floors on either side of the central open bay are carried on roughly-finished crossbeams of large scantling. The room towards the east (main house end) was probably used as a dairy in the 19th century. The room towards the west end probably functioned as a cider store with an apple store above. The floor includes a chute, and the open bay would originally have housed the cider-press.

This is an interesting and well-preserved multi-phase farmhouse.