Oak Farmhouse

This is an early or mid 16th-century farmhouse, significantly altered in the later 16th and 17th centuries, with modernization in the late 19th century. The walls are plastered cob on rubble footings, with stone rubble and cob stacks topped with 20th-century brick, and a slate roof (formerly thatched). Originally, the house possessed a 3-room-and-through-passage layout facing south, with the inner room located at the west end. A service wing was rebuilt in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, projecting to the rear and containing a kitchen, a narrow stone space in front, a larder, and a secondary staircase at the rear. The kitchen features an axial stack at its front end. The hall has a large axial stack backing onto the through-passage, and the inner room has a slightly projecting rear lateral stack. The house has two stories and a four-window front. The right end of the facade features a 19th-century window without glass panes, with a 20th-century window above lacking glazing bars. The remaining windows are late 19th-century sash windows, tripartite on the ground floor with central four-pane sashes, and margin-pane sashes on the first floor. A 19th-century plank door is positioned at the front of the passage and sheltered by a 20th-century monopitch slate-roofed hood. The roof is gable-ended to the left and hipped to the right, with a similar gable end to the rear block. The inner room at the rear of the main block is blind, but the hall includes two 18th-century flat-faced mullion windows featuring rectangular panes of leaded glass – a small two-light window and a taller three-light window. The service wing incorporates various 19th-century casements. The interior is well-preserved, containing cob crosswalls at the upper end of the hall and the lower side of the passage. There are two similar late 16th and early 17th-century oak doorways off the lower side of the passage, one leading to the kitchen and the other to the small front space. Both have chamfered surrounds with battered step or scroll stops. In the hall, the fireplace is blocked by a 20th-century grate, but indications of its large size remain, likely dating back to the late 16th or early 17th century and associated with a lower end jetty for the passage chamber. Originally, the hall was open to the roof, later floored in the mid-17th century; this is supported by a crossbeam with broad soffit-chamfers and fine, unusual bar-flat pyramid stops. There are three cupboards in the room, with 18th and 19th-century panelled doors; the one in the front wall has a round head. An oak bench with 17th-century panelled wainscotting along the back is situated at the upper end of the hall. Above the hall is a two-bay roof carried on a side-pegged jointed cruck truss, although access to the roof is currently restricted, precluding an assessment of smoke-blackening. The inner room end appears to be a 17th-century rebuild; the fireplace is blocked by a 20th-century grate, and the crossbeam is plastered over.