Stallenge Thorne Farmhouse Including Rear Courtyard

Stallenge Thorne Farmhouse Including Rear Courtyard

A farmhouse dated 1675, with parts probably earlier and some early or mid-19th-century modernisation. The building is mostly plastered stone rubble, with probable sections of cob and a parlour wing said to include brick. Stone rubble chimney stacks are topped with plastered brick. The roof is slate, probably formerly thatch.

The house follows an unusual courtyard plan. The main block faces south-south-east and contains a two-room-and-through-passage plan, with a large kitchen to the right and a hall/dining room to the left, both served by gable-end stacks. A two-storey porch projects in front of the passage doorway. A one-room-plan parlour block projects at right angles to the rear of the hall/dining room and has a rear gable-end stack. A second rear block parallel and alongside the parlour block appears to be part of the 1675 build. These double range form the west wing of the small rear courtyard. The other two sides of the courtyard are enclosed by service blocks of late 16th to early 17th-century date. The east wing includes a through passage to the rear of a dairy, which connects with the kitchen. The east wing also overlaps the end of the main block, but the angle there was later infilled by a small store. Although the service wings are earlier, there is no positive evidence of pre-1675 work inside the main house, and it appears essentially a single-phase building. The house and outbuildings are all two storeys.

The exterior is of good quality and unusually well-preserved. The main block and parlour fronts are virtually intact from 1675. The main front has an irregular 2:1:2 window arrangement of Hamstone windows with hollow-chamfered mullions and hoodmoulds containing rectangular panes of leaded glass. Only the first-floor window immediately left of the porch has been altered by insertion of a 19th-century casement with glazing bars taller than the original. The gabled two-storey porch is most impressive, with a Hamstone ashlar round-headed outer arch with facetted imposts and fluted keystone under an entablature with a pulvinated frieze and pediment. Above it is a three-light mullioned window, and above that, a date plaque with a modillion frame and hoodmould inscribed WC 1675. The gable has shaped kneelers, coping and an apex finial identical to that of nearby Court Hall Farmhouse. The passage front doorway is original, with an oak doorframe with moulded surround and urn stops, and a particularly fine contemporary 12-panel door containing strap hinges with fleur-de-lys finials. The main block roof is gable-ended to the left and hipped to the right over the 19th-century addition. The parlour wing contains a single Hamstone mullioned window on each floor. Other windows to the service blocks are 19th and 20th-century timber casements. In the rear block is a first-floor late 16th to early 17th-century oak loading hatch doorframe into the courtyard.

The interior is good and well-preserved. The kitchen is a large room with a four-bay ceiling of soffit-chamfered and step-stopped crossbeams, the last half-beam well proud of the kitchen stack, which is built of stone rubble with a soffit-chamfered oak lintel. The kitchen/passage crosswall retains the remains of an oak plank-and-muntin screen. The passage contains a 19th-century stair. The hall/dining room was originally of three bays, with unstopped ceiling beams featuring ogee soffit-mouldings. The fireplace here is blocked. The rear parlour is lined with bolection panelling in two heights and includes a blocked doorway from the hall/dining room with moulded entablature. The inner long side wall includes a round-headed and backed crockery cupboard with shaped shelves. It has a 19th-century chimneypiece and grate. This interior treatment of the parlour could well date to 1675, though if so it is somewhat early. Nevertheless, it is a very good example of late 17th-century interior decoration, and the box cornices on the crossbeams are contemporary with the panelling. On the first floor, the kitchen chamber fireplace has a bolection-moulded chimneypiece. Otherwise the first floor contains 19th-century joinery detail except for the base of straight principals to the roof trusses, their scantling large enough to suggest that the 1675 A-frame trusses remain in the roof. The northern and eastern wings appear older: the former is now open to a roof of A-frame trusses missing mortise-and-tenon collars and includes an oak crank-headed doorframe at first floor from the east wing, which includes soffit-chamfered and step-stopped crossbeams. From the left end of the front, a 19th-century garden wall built of stone rubble and including a garden gateway with stone rubble gate posts surmounted by Hamstone ball finials drops down to a terrace revetment as it returns across the front of the front garden.

Stallenge Thorne, mentioned as Stanlinz in the Domesday Survey, is one of the most attractive farmhouses on this Blackdown Hills border with Somerset, and has a most interesting plan and layout with high-quality interior features.