Burrow Farmhouse And Adjoining Cottage

Burrow Farmhouse and Adjoining Cottage

Burrow Farmhouse is a two-storey farmhouse with adjoining cottage, constructed from plastered stone rubble, probably with cob, and featuring stone rubble stacks with plastered brick tops and a concrete tile roof (formerly thatch). The building has probable 16th-century origins but was substantially rearranged and enlarged in the early 17th century. A Hamstone datestone inscribed RB 1743 is present above the lobby entrance doorway, though no architectural work can be associated with this date.

The building forms an L-plan with the main block facing south and a parlour wing projecting forward at right angles from the right (west) end. The main block follows a 3-room lobby entrance plan. The left (west) end room is the kitchen, originally featuring a projecting rear lateral stack (now blocked and replaced by an end stack). The large central room serves as the hall, with an axial stack backing onto the kitchen and a newel stair turret projecting to the rear. A lobby entrance lies between the hall and kitchen in front of the hall stack. The unheated left end room was originally divided into two by an axial division, with the rear room probably serving as a dairy and the front as a lobby connecting the hall and parlour wing. The parlour wing originally contained only the parlour with a gable-end stack; a secondary extension now backs onto this stack and has been brought into domestic use. The parlour wing is now a self-contained cottage.

The layout appears to represent an early 17th-century rebuilding of what was likely an earlier 16th-century 3-room-and-through-passage open hall house. The west end was completely rebuilt as a kitchen, the hall was floored, the inner room reorganised, and the parlour wing added. Both the main block and wings are gable-ended. Fenestration is irregular: the main block has three ground floor and two first floor windows, all 20th-century casements, many without glazing bars. The lobby entrance doorway contains a 20th-century door behind a contemporary gabled porch. The parlour wing has similar fenestration. The garage at the end of the crosswing occupies the former horse engine house.

The interior is well-preserved. In the kitchen, part of the chamfered oak lintel of the original fireplace remains visible, though the fireplace itself is blocked. The ceiling structure has been replaced, but the roof above is carried on an early 17th-century side-pegged jointed cruck truss. An early 17th-century oak Tudor arch doorway with an ancient studded plank door connects the kitchen to the hall. In the hall, the stone rubble fireplace bears a chamfered oak lintel. At the upper end stands a good early 17th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen with moulded muntins, containing a blocked original doorway at the right end; the present left end doorway is composed of reused 17th-century moulded timbers. The three-bay ceiling is carried by richly-moulded and unstopped crossbeams. Another oak Tudor arch marks the newel stair, where the original stone steps are said to remain beneath the timber treads. In the inner room, the head beam survives from an oak plank-and-muntin partition that once divided the room into two; another oak plank-and-muntin screen separates the inner room from the parlour. The parlour features a 6-panel intersecting beam ceiling with deep hollow-chamfered soffits. The parlour fireplace was apparently blocked after its oak lintel caught fire. The roofs over the hall and inner room end are inaccessible, though the bases of side-pegged jointed cruck trusses are exposed; these appear different in character from the kitchen truss and may be 16th-century. The roof over the parlour is inaccessible.

This is a well-preserved farmhouse of particular interest for its early 17th-century layout. Burrow is first recorded in the 1333 Subsidy Roll as the home of Anestas atte Burghe.