Middle Coombe Farmhouse Including Rear Court Yard Walls

Middle Coombe Farmhouse, including rear courtyard walls

Farmhouse dating from the late 16th to early 17th century, probably with an earlier core. The building underwent late 19th-century modernisation with a contemporary stairblock and outshots, and was renovated around 1960. It is constructed of plastered stone rubble, probably with some cob, with late 19th-century brick outshots. The chimneys are stone rubble stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brick. The roof is thatched, with a gate to the outshot.

The main block faces south-west and is built diagonally across the hillslope, with its south-east end terraced into it. The house follows a four-room-and-through-passage plan. At the north-west end, the present kitchen was formerly an inner room parlour with a projecting rear lateral stack. Adjacent to it, the former hall has a projecting rear lateral stack. Alongside, at the upper end, the original stairblock has been converted to cupboards. To the south-east of the passage, there is a service end with a two-room plan that has been much rebuilt but apparently has always comprised two rooms. The first of these is said to have had a rear corner diagonal stack, probably secondary. The kitchen and bakehouse were located in a detached rear block. This appears to be a single-phase late 16th to early 17th-century house in which the hall was floored over from the start. In the late 19th century a rear outshot was built across the back of the hall and passage, and the original stair was replaced by one in the outshot at this time. The two-storey porch appears to have been added at the same time. The house is two storeys in height.

The front elevation is notable for retaining a high proportion of original windows. It displays a not quite symmetrical 2:1:2 window arrangement around a roughly central gabled two-storey porch. The porch has an outer segmental arch and first-floor late 19th-century horned four-pane sash. The passage front doorway contains a contemporary plank door. To the left is the original oak-framed hall window: six lights with ovolo-moulded mullions, central king mullion, and central transom. The master chamber directly above has a similar window frame but not quite as tall. Left of these, the inner room has an original four-light window with oak ovolo-moulded mullions, and the window above has a richly-moulded oak headbeam. To the right of the porch only the first-floor windows are original with ovolo-moulded mullions; the ground-floor windows are 20th-century casements with glazing bars. The original windows all have 19th and 20th-century glazing bars except the first-floor right-end window, which contains rectangular panes of leaded glass. The roof is gable-ended. On the south-east end there is a first-floor doorway directly off the terrace.

The interior is of good quality, with most of the carpentry and some of the joinery being original. The wainscotting in the passage was made up in the 20th century from pieces of 17th-century oak small-field panelling. The service end has been altered in the 19th and 20th centuries, and all that shows at ground-floor level is an unstopped soffit-chamfered crossbeam.

In the hall, on the other side of the passage, the walls are lined with probably original oak small-field panelling with lozenge motifs in the frieze. The axial beams have double ovolo mouldings with bar-scroll stops. The joists are exposed, plain and square in section, with wide oak floorboards running along the gaps between the joists above them. The fireplace is blocked by a 19th-century chimneypiece, and the cupboard alongside to the left is thought to be a conversion from the original stair turret. In the inner room, the hall-side crosswall is lined by oak small-field panelling, but the fireplace here is blocked. On the first floor, original oak doorframes to the inner room and hall chambers have ogee-moulded surrounds with bar-scroll stops. Since the mouldings face into the rooms, they are thought to have come from the original stair landing. In the hall chamber, the upper end is lined with a very good length of 17th-century wainscotting of small-field oak panelling divided into bays by fluted pilasters and with a frieze of carved acanthus leaves with shields. The roof is carried on a series of jointed cruck trusses (the bases are plastered over but their shape can be seen). The main partitions are closed trusses with oak framing. The roof is clean throughout. The remaining joinery detail, including the main stair, is 19th century.

A rear courtyard is enclosed by a tall stone rubble wall. The outer rear walls are those of a detached kitchen and bakehouse block, probably contemporary with the original main house. Blocked windows in its back wall are clearly visible, and it also includes a large kitchen fireplace with side oven and soffit-chamfered oak lintel.

This is an exceptionally well-preserved late 16th to early 17th-century farmhouse which also forms part of a very good group with its gatehouse and early farm buildings.