Higher Chieflowman Farmhouse Including Front Garden Walls

Higher Chieflowman Farmhouse, including front garden walls

This is a farmhouse of early 16th-century origin with substantial later 16th and 17th-century improvements, capped by a thorough modernisation in the late 17th century. The building is constructed of plastered stone rubble, probably with cob, with stone rubble chimneys topped with 19th and 20th-century brick. The roof is thatched, with one end replaced with concrete tile and slate covering a rear outshot. The house faces south-east, built across a gentle hillslope.

The original plan was a three-room-and-through-passage arrangement. At the south-western end lies an inner room parlour with a gable-end stack. The hall has a rear lateral stack. At the right end stands a service kitchen with a large gable-end stack and projecting oven housing. The rear of the passage is now occupied by the main stair.

The early 16th-century smoke-blackened roof survives over the hall and inner room, demonstrating that the original house was open to the roof from end to end, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. No apparent improvements are visible before the mid 17th century, though a hall fireplace was presumably inserted earlier and the inner room at least was floored over. In the mid 17th century the service end was rebuilt as a kitchen. The house was substantially refurbished in the late 17th century, when the rear of the passage was blocked by stairs, hall and parlour fireplaces were rebuilt, rooms were refurbished, all first-floor chambers were refurbished, and a new higher roof was constructed, partly over the original roof. A dairy or service wing was built at right angles in front, overlapping the right kitchen end, but this collapsed in the mid 20th century; it dates to either the mid or late 17th century. The service outshot to the rear of the kitchen is probably 19th-century.

The house stands two storeys high. The front elevation is attractive and irregular, with four windows. The right end bay (kitchen and chamber above) features mid 17th-century oak-framed windows with ovolo-moulded mullions: four lights on the ground floor and three lights on the first floor. The other windows appear to be late 17th-century, with oak framing and three lights with flat-faced mullions. Each light contains small eight-pane sashes, presumably 19th-century. These tripartite sashes are notably attractive and most unusual. The front doorway is right of centre, containing a mid or late 19th-century four-panel door behind a contemporary flat-roofed porch with trellis walls. The roof is gable-ended. The rear wall is largely blind except for a secondary service door to the rear outshot and a small first-floor window at the same end. Near the right end of the front wall a cob wall projects a short distance forward at right angles to the main block; this is all that remains of the 17th-century service wing and still contains a 17th-century oak-framed window with chamfered mullion and a contemporary oak doorframe with chamfered surround.

The interior preserves important features from different periods. Apart from the roof, the kitchen contains the earliest features, dating to the mid 17th century. A crossbeam with deep soffit-chamfers survives here, and although the large fireplace is blocked, its soffit-chamfered and scroll-stopped oak lintel is visible. The rest of the house contains late 17th-century features, notably complete in their survival. Both hall and parlour fireplaces have curving brick pentans (backs) and soffit-chamfered oak lintels, with roughly finished crossbeams probably intended to be clad with plaster. Lengths of moulded plaster cornice remain in both rooms and in the parlour chamber above. Ground-floor doors are 19th-century, but all first-floor doors are late 17th-century; they are eight-panel doors with scratch-moulded rails and muntins, hanging on butterfly or H-hinges. The two first-floor fireplaces (over the parlour and kitchen) both have bolection chimneypieces. The staircase is a plain straight flight. Cupboards in the kitchen and chamber above are also late 17th-century with panelled oak doors hung on butterfly and H-hinges.

The original roof over the inner room and hall is carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses. The entire roof structure here, including common rafters and the underside of the original thatch, is heavily smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The remainder of the roof is late 17th-century and clean, carried on A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars.

The front garden is terraced slightly above the surrounding ground and is enclosed by a 19th-century low stone rubble wall.

This farmhouse presents a most picturesque appearance featuring unusual tripartite sash windows, and the interior is remarkably well-preserved from its late 17th-century phase. Chieflowman was the Domesday manor of Lonnina.