Coddiford Farmhouse And Cottage Including Cob Garden Wall Adjoinng To South-West

Coddiford Farmhouse and Cottage

A farmhouse with adjoining cottage, early 17th century or possibly earlier, with a 17th-century cottage extension and early 18th-century refurbishment. The buildings are constructed of plastered cob on rubble footings with rubble chimney stacks, later fitted with 19th and 20th-century brick chimney shafts. The roof is of slate, though formerly thatched. The complex forms an irregular group arranged on a basic L-plan.

The main block faces south-west and contains a three-room-and-through-passage plan with a service room at the south-east end. A 17th-century kitchen wing projects at right angles to the rear of the passage and hall. An end stack serves the service room, and a rear lateral stack serves the hall. The cottage cross-wing to the front of the higher end originally had two rooms but now contains only one, with a front end stack. Various additions were made to the rear during the 19th and 20th centuries. The building is two storeys high.

The main range features an irregular front of five windows facing south-west, comprising casements of various dates and sizes. The two first-floor windows on the right and the ground-floor right-end windows are early 18th-century flat-faced mullion windows with rectangular panes of leaded glass, much of it original, thin and green-tinted. The end windows on both floors have iron casements with ornate wrought-iron flat strapwork catches. Other ground-floor windows and the first-floor centre-left window are 20th-century replacement casements with leaded glass. Two first-floor left casements from the 20th century replaced a 17th-century oak four-light window with ovolo-moulded mullions, now set in a 20th-century annexe to the rear. The inner south-east face of the cottage wing has a two-window front, with a 20th-century ground-floor right window and a first-floor left window that is an early 18th-century type similar to the main block. This first-floor window replaced a partly defaced 17th-century oak three-light window with ovolo-moulded mullions. The front end and north-west front of the cottage feature 20th-century fenestration.

The interior is of considerable interest. The earliest features in the main block include an early 17th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen on the lower side of the passage, with ovolo-moulded and scroll-stopped muntins, central recessed panels, and an original doorway at the rear end. A contemporary moulded oak rear passage door frame (now converted to a window) is also present. The hall fireplace is 17th-century, constructed from volcanic ashlar with hollow-chamfer ovolo-moulded jambs with run-out stops. The rear pentice includes a round-headed oven door (now a window) and a carved stone showing a square within a diagonally set square. Probably an early 18th-century replacement plain oak lintel is fitted above. Two plain chamfered hall crossbeams, possibly 17th-century, survive. The service room was refurbished in the early 18th century and includes a contemporary full-height cupboard recessed into the rear wall, flanked by panelled pilasters with a moulded cornice. The upper cupboard has a round-headed form with shaped shelves and a segmental-headed glazed door with broad glazing bars and H-hinges, whilst the lower cupboard has fielded panel doors. A similar architrave frames an alcove to the right of the fireplace, which contains a 19th-century chimneypiece. The first-floor chamber above preserves early 18th-century full-height cupboards with six fielded-panel doors and doorcases as ornate as those below. The roof structure consists of early 18th-century A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars.

The kitchen block, dating to the late 17th or early 18th century, contains a plain chamfered crossbeam and a large rubble fireplace with an oak lintel whose soffit is chamfered with straight-cut stops. An oven doorway (now a window) is associated with this fireplace. The cottage interior was substantially rebuilt around 1970, but preserves a plain chamfered beam at the south-west end and a 17th-century rubble fireplace with an oak lintel whose soffit is chamfered with scroll stops. The lintel is inscribed "1492 FP", presumably by a modern hand.

A high plastered cob garden wall on rubble footings extends south-westwards from the right end of the main house front, running alongside the front garden. It is topped with a pitched slate coping and includes a round-headed doorway and a series of road-sloping volcanic rubble buttresses, two of which are dressed with brick.