Down Farmhouse And Adjoining Outbuilding

Down Farmhouse and Adjoining Outbuilding

A farmhouse with early 16th-century origins, substantially remodelled and probably extended in the early 17th century. The main building is colourwashed plastered stone and cob with a thatched roof, gabled at the ends and half-hipped at the end of the wing. The right end stack and axial stack to the main block are notable; the right end stack includes a projecting bread oven, while a projecting lateral stack with set-offs serves the wing. An adjoining outbuilding has a slate roof.

The plan is overall U-shaped, comprising a single-depth three-room main block facing south with two front wings. The left-hand wing is domestic, while the right-hand wing contains a first-floor room projecting over a cart entrance adjacent to an outbuilding formerly used as a cider house. The main block was originally a late medieval open hall house, with medieval timbers surviving above the right-hand room and originally extending further to the left. The early 17th-century remodelling is unusual in showing no evidence of a cross or through passage. The two right-hand rooms are heated and roughly equal in size; the extreme right room is a kitchen with a narrow dog-leg stair beside the stack, possibly replacing a newel, with direct entrance from outside. The left end of the block is divided between a small service room and a probably 18th-century stair. The front left wing, dating to the late 16th or early 17th century, has a separate entrance leading into an axial passage that gives access to the left-hand heated room and to the main block, with a service room to the rear of the passage. Although the wing appears later than the main block, it may be contemporary, consisting of a two-storey block with a chamber over a parlour.

The exterior is two storeys with an asymmetrical two-window front and regular fenestration. A probably 18th-century plank front door to the right stands under a corrugated iron lean-to. Nineteen-century three-light timber casements with glazing bars, brick sills and brick voussoirs light the ground floor. The return of the left wing is blank except for a front door to the right with a slated canopy and a two-light first-floor 19th-century timber casement above. The return of the right wing has a cart entrance to the left; the adjoining outbuilding has three ground-floor doorways and two first-floor windows.

The interior is virtually unaltered since the 19th century. The right end fireplace is partly blocked but retains an early lintel, probably 19th-century hearth seats and a 19th-century bread oven. The centre room has two plastered-over crossbeams and a 20th-century fireplace probably concealing earlier jambs and lintel. The service room has a chamfered step-stopped crossbeam and a cobbled floor; the heated room in the wing has a partly blocked fireplace, probably concealing earlier features.

The roof structure is remarkable. One smoke-blackened medieval truss over the kitchen survives complete with sooted battens, rafters and thatch, featuring a diagonally-set ridge. The collar has been replaced but was formerly lap-dovetailed onto the principals. The sooted roof structure clearly extended beyond the wattle and daub partition now dividing it from late 18th-century X apex trusses over the rest of the main block. These are pegged at the apex, with nailed trusses over the wing having mortised collars. The building represents a remarkably unaltered traditional house with a long building history.