Spalsbury Farmhouse Including Garden Area Wall To The South East

Spalsbury Farmhouse Including Garden Area Wall to the South East

A Grade II* listed farmhouse of early to mid-16th century date, substantially improved in the later 16th and 17th centuries, with some 19th-century modernisation and a 19th-century extension. The building is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble chimney stacks (one with a stone rubble chimneyshaft; the others topped with 19th and 20th-century brick). The roof is covered in concrete tiles, formerly thatch, with slate to part of the service wing and outshots.

The house follows an L-plan, with the main block facing south-east and built across the hillslope. It contains a 4-room plan. The left end room has a large gable-end stack and connects to the hall via a corridor in front of small unheated rooms. The hall itself has a projecting rear lateral stack. The main stair is positioned between the hall and the right end room, which has a gable-end stack. A 2-room service wing is built at right angles in front of and overlapping the left end room, with an axial stack in the first room and an outer corner stack in the second.

The hall section is known to have been originally open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. A fireplace was inserted in the mid or late 16th century and the hall was floored in the early or mid-17th century. The stair to the north-east of the hall is a 19th-century insertion into the former inner room, which was itself converted to a kitchen in the mid-17th century. The 2-room and corridor section to the left of the hall appears to have been converted from a through-passage and small unheated dairy. The house is now two storeys throughout.

The exterior displays an irregular 6-window front of 20th-century casements with glazing bars. Right of centre is a doorway inserted for the 19th-century stair, and slightly left of centre is the probable former passage front doorway; both contain 19th-century plank doors. The first has a 19th-century gabled porch and the second has a 20th-century porch with rustic posts. The service wing has 19th and 20th-century casements, mostly with glazing bars. The main block roof is gable-ended; the service wing roof is hipped.

The interior contains notable features. The left end room has a massive stone fireplace with a chamfered cambered oak lintel. The crossbeam here features broad hollow chamfers with step stops. Between this room and the putative dairy, the partition includes a crank-headed doorway, possibly part of an oak plank-and-muntin screen. An oak plank-and-muntin screen appears on the first floor directly above. Two further screens exist, one at each end of the hall. The lower end screen is the plainest, with muntins chamfered only on the passage side. The upper end screen has richly moulded muntins and is probably mid-17th century in date. Here stands another stone fireplace with an oak lintel. The 19th-century stair occupies one bay of the 3-bay ceiling, which like the hall ceiling is carried on crossbeams with deep chamfers. The kitchen fireplace is also stone with a chamfered oak lintel and includes an oven and a walk-in smoking chamber alongside. The two present stairs are probably 19th century; the main one was inserted into the inner room and another rises from the left end room. Both have first floor balustrades which reuse early or mid-17th-century turned oak balusters.

The roof is carried on a series of side-pegged jointed cruck trusses. The roofspace is inaccessible, making it impossible to prove whether all trusses are of the same date, though the hall section at least dates to the early or mid-16th century and is smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire.

The narrow strip of garden across the front is enclosed by a 19th-century low stone rubble wall which includes a stone mounting block at the right end.