Aller Restaurant

Aller Restaurant

This building, formerly known as Green's Farmhouse, is a dwelling with restaurant use that originated as a farmhouse. It probably dates to the late medieval period but was substantially modified during the 17th century, with further alterations made subsequently. The structure is built of roughcast cob on a stone plinth that rises quite high at the left-hand end, with a hipped slate roof.

The house was originally planned as a three-room through-passage dwelling, with the service end positioned to the left of the passage. A low plank and muntin screen separates the hall from the inner room, with both a bressumer above the head beam and an axial beam cut into the top of the head beam, indicating that a first floor was inserted into an earlier, possibly late medieval building that was originally open to the roof. The only remaining element of the earlier roof structure is one post set into the rear wall, now covered over, which was probably the lower part of one blade of a cruck truss. The hall is heated by an axial stone stack backing onto the passage, while the service end has an external lateral rear stack. The inner room remained unheated until a 19th or early 20th-century end stack with a brick shaft was added. An external newel stair turret is positioned at the rear of the inner room, with an internal newel staircase adjacent to the service end fireplace. The building is two storeys.

The front elevation displays a five-window range, with all first-floor windows featuring 20th-century casements. At ground level, a 19th-century porch leads to the through-passage, featuring a slate roof with red ridge tiles, bargeboards with apex pendant, a boarded tympanum above an elliptical arch, and latticed sides. To the left of the porch is a two-light window. The hall and inner room have four-light windows, with a three-light window between them lighting a small inserted room at the higher end of the screen. These windows retain late 18th or early 19th-century casements with contemporary catches, espalier and saddle bars, and replacement leading of eight panes per light.

Extending forward of the service end is a lower cob and stone range with a slated gabled-end roof. Five timber uprights are visible, there are two first-floor openings with double doors, and two planked doors at ground-floor level with strap hinges. Nesting boxes are built into the gable wall. The pegged A-frame roof of this range suggests a late 18th-century date.

The rear elevation features a slated stair turret and a pantiled brick leanto with two-light leaded windows.

In the interior, the plank and muntin screen between hall and inner room has chamfered muntins with carpenter's mitres, stopping about fifteen inches above the ground on the hall side only. A chamfered bressumer runs above. An unstopped axial beam extends the entire length of the hall and into the inner room, supported at its higher end on the screen by a timber post. A small room has been inserted within the inner room to the rear of the screen and is largely plastered over on this side.

The hall fireplace has a shallow chamfered lintel and undressed stone back. The service end features a chamfered axial ceiling beam and a largely rebuilt fireplace. In the roof space, the lower part of the possibly medieval truss noted above is not visible. One 17th-century truss survives, though its apex carpentry has been removed. All other roof timbers are 20th-century replacements.