Spestos Farmhouse

Spestos Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the 16th century, with alterations and improvements made in the 17th century and late 17th to early 18th century. It was renovated around 1984. The building is constructed of plastered cob and rubble, with some areas repaired using 20th-century concrete blockwork. It features rubble stacks topped with a plastered 20th-century brick chimney shaft and has a corrugated asbestos roof, which was originally thatch.

The farmhouse was originally designed with a three-room-and-through-passage layout facing southeast, with the inner room located at the right (northeast) end. It includes a large axial hall stack that backs onto the passage and an end stack for the service room. The inner room's end stack was demolished around 1984, and a new axial stack was constructed backing onto the hall. The rear passage doorway has been blocked. A newel turret projects from the rear of the hall.

The building is two storeys high and has a regular four-window front with 20th-century casements, one of which has glazing bars. There are 20th-century buttresses on either side of the central two windows, and a 20th-century door leads to the passage, located to the left of centre. The roof is hipped at both ends.

Inside, the hall side of the passage features neatly squared blocks of granite from the rear of the late 16th-century stack, and towards the back is the headbeam of a contemporary oak plank-and-muntin screen. The hall contains a large granite fireplace with an oak lintel that has a soffit chamfer and step stops. The large crossbeam and two half-beams in the hall have plain chamfers and are likely from the 17th century. The rear newel stair was rebuilt and turned around around 1984. The service room has a roughly chamfered crossbeam and a large rubble fireplace with a plain-chamfered oak lintel, probably dating from the late 17th to early 18th century. The inner room was completely rebuilt around 1984. The roof features late 17th to early 18th-century A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars, and the hall truss at the rear rests on a vertical post that is chased into the wall. The large-framed partition between the hall and passage chambers may date back to the late 16th century.