Westown Farmhouse

ST 11 SW HEMYOCK WESTOWN 5/66 Westown Farmhouse - - II Farmhouse. Mid C16; one of the two rear wings is C17; later alterations. Random rubble flint; gable end slate roof. Plan: originally a 4-room, through-passage plan house, the hall and inner room to the left of the passage, with a contemporary wing to the rear; the service end is divided into 2 rooms by a fireplace which looks modern but has a stone stack and shaft; the extreme right-hand room (unheated) has a blocked drain which suggests the possibility of its having once been a shippon (see Commander Williams' report cited below). A C17 wing is placed to the rear of the lower end, with a large end fireplace, and probably served as a kitchen. Hall is heated by a stone axial stack backing onto the passage; early wing heated by an internal lateral stack (to the inner face). The house appears always to have been of 2 storeys. Exterior: Front: 4-window range; first floor with C19 2 and 3-light casement windows, one with stanchions; ground floor : plain, chamfered, 4-centred stone arch to passage. Casement and sash windows. Buttressing. Right-hand elevation : a projection under a catslide close to the junction of wing and main range could be a former newel stair turret. Otherwise C19 and C20 casement windows. Left-wing end elevation concealed by adjacent linhay (q.v.) Rear: the C17 wing has no windows to end elevation or inner face; French window and casement windows to earlier wing. Between the 2 wings are some later additions and a pointed stone doorway arch (originally opposing that to the front) has been re-set. Interior: hall and inner room divided by a plank and muntin screen of which only a fragment survives; a partition above it rises through the first floor. Uncovered since Commander Williams' visit (1982) is a doorway from the hall into the rear wing, chamfered with cranked lintels, morticed into heavy studs that act as jambs. Roof with 6 trusses with straight principals; the roof was not inspected but is described in great detail in Commander E H D Williams' report in NMR, (1982), and more briefly in Period Home, Vol. 5, no. 6 (July 1984), pp. 59-60.

Listing NGR: ST1192713461