Hill Farmhouse

Hill Farmhouse is an early 16th-century farmhouse with major alterations made in the later 16th and 17th centuries, thoroughly modernised around 1980. It stands at Uplowman.

The building is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble stacks and tall stone rubble chimneyshafts. The roof is now covered with asbestos slate, having formerly been thatched, and is gable-ended.

Originally, the house followed a three-room-and-through-passage plan facing south. The inner room at the right (east) end has a gable-end stack. The former hall has a disused rear lateral stack. The service end kitchen at the left end has a large gable-end stack. The surviving original roof structure shows that the house was mostly, if not wholly, open to the roof, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. Later alterations have removed or hidden evidence of subsequent development at the hall and inner room end. The service end was rebuilt as a kitchen in the mid 17th century. In the 19th century, the rear of the passage was blocked by the present staircase. Around 1980, the hall, inner room, and rear outshots were united by removing partitions between them, and beams and some roof sections were replaced at this time.

The house is two storeys. The exterior presents an irregular five-window front of 20th-century casements with glazing bars. The passage front doorway contains a 20th-century door behind a contemporary gabled porch. Near the left end, at about the level of the original eaves, there is a small square hole passing right through the wall, lined by oak boards and slightly smoke-blackened—a curious feature possibly serving as a ventilation hole to allow smoke from the original open hearth fire to escape.

The crossbeams of the former hall and inner room are all replacements. Sections of original beams form an arcade along the line of the original back wall of the inner room. The inner room fireplace is stone rubble with a soffit-chamfered oak lintel, part of which has been renewed. The hall fireplace is blocked. The upper (hall side) passage screen is a 16th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen, the muntins chamfered with cut diagonal stops. The cranked doorhead has been altered in the 20th century.

The large kitchen features a three-bay ceiling carried on unstopped soffit-chamfered crossbeams. Its fireplace is blocked, but its large size is apparent and its soffit-chamfered oak lintel remains visible. On the first floor landing stands a blocked 17th-century oak two-light window with chamfered mullion. The chamber over the kitchen contains a 17th-century fireplace and alongside a contemporary cupboard with a panelled door ornamented with chip carving and hung on butterfly hinges.

The kitchen end of the roof is also 17th-century and contains a tall A-frame truss with pegged dovetail-shaped lap jointed collar. The roof over the passage and part of the kitchen and hall either side is original. It comprises two side-pegged jointed crucks of large scantling with single sets of curving windbraces. This roof structure is smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The rest of the roof has been rebuilt in the 19th and 20th centuries.