Slantycombe Farmhouse

Slantycombe Farmhouse is a farmhouse with a core dating back to the 16th century, significantly refurbished and rearranged in the mid-17th century. The west end wall was rebuilt around 1900 after a collapse. The front of the house is constructed of stone rubble, while the rear is of cob on stone rubble footings. Slate covers the roof, which was originally thatched. The farmhouse is built across a hillslope, facing south.

Originally a 3-room lobby entrance plan house, the layout reflects major renovations to an early or mid-16th century 3-room-and-through-passage dwelling. The 17th-century kitchen was originally the hall, open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. A fireplace dating back to the late 16th century originally backed onto the passage. The mid-17th century saw the passage abolished, with the parlour fireplace built backing onto the former hall stack, and the entire house rearranged. A small room at the right end, now a kitchen, features a projecting gable-end stack, likely added in the 18th or 19th centuries, and thought to have been an unheated dairy. The centre room (the hall) was used as a kitchen, and the left room (the parlour) served as a parlour. A shared axial stack provides back-to-back fireplaces for the kitchen and parlour, with the front lobby entrance situated between them, to the side of the stack.

The farmhouse is two storeys high, and an outshot is located to the rear of the hall/kitchen. The front elevation features an irregular arrangement of late 19th and 20th century casement windows, some without glazing bars. One partly blocked window retains a single light with rectangular panes of leaded glass. The front doorway, located to the left of centre, has a late 19th century plank door and a contemporary hood supported on shaped brackets.

Inside, the parlour carpentry is of mid-17th century construction. A soffit-chamfered axial beam has bar scroll stops, matching the finish on the oak lintel of the stone rubble fireplace. The hall/kitchen fireplace is different, with an oak framed surround suggesting a cob chimney. A crossbeam here has broad soffit-chamfers and no stops, and a half beam is set prominently in front of the chimneybreast. The current staircase, likely late 19th or 20th century, rises behind the hall stack, although a hollow in the rear wall suggests the original staircase’s position. The roof is supported by four trusses; the two central trusses show smoke-blackening from the 16th-century open hearth, while the principals of the other trusses are side-pegged cruck, set into the cob rear wall and the frost stone wall.