Hole Farmhouse

Hole Farmhouse

A farmhouse dating from the early to mid-16th century, with substantial later additions in the 16th and 17th centuries, modernised in the 19th century and again around 1970. Nineteenth-century deeds reference a land grant here dating to approximately 1540.

The building is constructed from exposed local stone rubble with stone rubble chimney stacks and shafts topped with 20th-century brick. The roof is covered with interlocking tile, replacing the original thatch.

The house is built across the hillslope facing south-west as a long, 2-storey structure throughout. The plan comprises a central 3-room-and-through-passage arrangement—the original core—with a 2-room extension to the right end.

The left end of the house contains a kitchen with a gable-end stack and a former walk-in curing chamber alongside, projecting forward. Next is the hall, featuring a large axial stack backing onto the passage. To the right of the passage is a parlour with an axial stack shared with the first room of the right-end extension. The right room has its own gable-end stack. A dairy outshot, probably dating to the 17th century, projects from the rear of the left end kitchen. Two-storey outshots to the rear, running from the passage rightwards, date to probably the late 19th or early 20th century.

Structurally, the original early or mid-16th-century house was a 3-room-and-through-passage plan. At this time, the hall and possibly the passage and lower end were open to the roof, heated by an open hearth fire. The inner room (now the kitchen) was floored over with a chamber above. A hall fireplace was inserted in the late 16th century, probably coinciding with the flooring over of the passage and lower end. The hall itself was floored in the mid-17th century as part of a major rearrangement. The inner room was then converted to a kitchen with a new stack and curing chamber. The dairy outshot was probably added at this time. The hall became a dining room and the lower room a parlour, which was refurbished again in the late 17th to early 18th century. The 2-room extension to the right dates to the mid or late 17th century and is now divided off as a separate cottage, though it may originally have been built as such.

The exterior presents a long and irregular 5-window front with 19th and 20th-century replacement casement windows, some with concrete lintels dating to around 1970. The passage front doorway, slightly left of centre, contains a 19th-century style panelled door; another doorway serves the cottage at the right end. The window to the lower parlour has been converted to a French window. The former curing chamber projects forward at the left end. The roof is gable-ended.

Internally, the old inner room, now the 17th-century kitchen, contains a soffit-chamfered and step-stopped crossbeam. The large stone rubble fireplace features a plain-chamfered oak lintel, a side oven, and the disused walk-in curing chamber alongside. The former hall is a large room with a substantial stone rubble fireplace and oak lintel with a chamfered low Tudor arch. The crossbeam here is soffit-chamfered with scroll stops. The passage and parlour were refurbished in the late 17th to early 18th century with no surviving carpentry detail; the doorway from passage to parlour contains a fielded 2-panel door of that period. Several similar doors are found elsewhere in the house. The parlour fireplace is blocked.

The original roof survives over the hall and the inner room/kitchen, carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses. The two trusses over the hall are heavily smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire, whilst that over the inner room/kitchen is clean. The remainder of the roof appears to be a late 19th to early 20th-century replacement, built to incorporate the 2-storey outshots. The 2-room extension is otherwise carpeted with 17th-century detail, both rooms containing plain soffit-chamfered axial beams.