Priestcombe Farmhouse Including Adjoining Forecourt Walls And Cobbling

Priestcombe Farmhouse is a large farmhouse, likely dating back to the 16th century, with significant alterations made in the early to mid-17th century and modernization in the late 19th century. It was originally a three-room-and-through-passage house facing south-east, with an inner room at the south-west end. A dairy wing was later added at right angles to the rear of the inner room. The house has gable-end stacks serving the service and inner rooms, and an axial hall stack backing onto the passage. In the 19th century, the rear of the passage was blocked by the insertion of a stair.

The front of the house presents a regular five-window facade of 19th and 20th-century casement windows, most with glazing bars. A 19th-century four-panel door is located to the right of the centre of the front facade. The hall features an original chimney of volcanic stone that was raised in the 19th century and includes a brick finish.

Inside, the house primarily showcases early to mid-17th-century features. The service room contains a volcanic stone fireplace with a chamfered oak lintel, three inserted 19th-century bread ovens (one of cloam), and a disused stair alcove. The hall also has a large fireplace made of veined volcanic ashlar with a chamfered oak lintel and two crossbeams, chamfered with scroll stops. An oak plank-and-muntin screen, also chamfered with scroll stops, separates rooms; the inner room’s fireplace preserves traces of ancient colour in two rectangular panels, and features a volcanic ashlar lintel. A contemporary corridor runs along the rear wall of the first floor, including a chamfered oak door frame with scroll stops to one of the inner room chambers. The service room chamber has a late 17th-century coved plaster cornice. A late 17th-century oak three-light chamfered mullion window frame is present at the level of the former stair alcove. The roof has a six-bay structure of early to mid-17th-century oak A-frame trusses with dovetail lap-jointed collars.

The quality of the service room suggests that the ground-floor fireplace was only converted to a kitchen after the rear wing was rebuilt as a dairy and the original kitchen stack was demolished. A plastered cob wall on rubble footings, capped with a pitched thatch roof, runs alongside the front garden. The boundary is completed by lower stone walls and granite gate posts, accompanied by a small triangular cobbled surface immediately outside the gate.