Narracott

Narracott is a farmhouse dating from the late 15th or early 16th century, with substantial remodelling in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and later additions and alterations in the 19th and 20th centuries. The house is built of whitewashed roughcast, cob, and stone rubble, with gabled slate and asbestos sheeting roofs, and has two rendered ridge stacks. The original plan consisted of three rooms with a through-passage, the lower end being on the left, with a 17th-century addition forming the higher right-hand room. The hall likely had an open roof, and possibly the lower end as well, though evidence of the open lower end is now obscured by a replacement roof. A large axial stack was inserted into the lower end of the hall in the late 16th century, backing onto the passage. It is possible that the hall's flooring was laid at the same time, or shortly after, when a stair turret was built at the back of the hall and the adjacent inner room was added as a service room. The lower end was later upgraded to a parlour. A 19th-century outshut was added at the back of the lower end, which involved the demolition of the earlier stair turret to the hall. Gable end stacks heated both the inner room and lower room. The 2-storey front has an asymmetrical 3:1 window arrangement, with late 19th-century windows with small panes to the left, and more recent windows in wood and metal elsewhere. A through-passage doorway with a plank door is on the left. The inner room has a inserted doorway and a large 20th-century glazed porch, with a buttress to the right of the porch. The lower room has a small fireplace with a wooden bressumer. The through-passage retains a slate flagstone floor and features a 19th-century staircase. The hall has a large central cross ceiling beam with pyramid stops and multiple hollow mouldings on the front-facing side, a fireplace with a simple chamfered wooden bressumer and corbelled right side, a 19th-century bread oven with an iron door, and a massive chamfered wooden door surround with a semi-circular head and plank door leading to the passage. A recently uncovered window opening in the rear wall of the hall has a wooden frame with two narrow semi-circular head lights. A blocked door opening in a chamfered wooden surround with a depressed 4-centred arch head is also in the rear wall of the hall, likely leading to the former stair turret. The inner room has a roughly chamfered cross ceiling beam. On the first floor, a bathroom is situated to the right, with another blocked doorway in a chamfered wooden surround with a depressed 4-centred arch head, likely the upper entrance to the stair turret. The hall retains a smoke-blackened raised cruck truss with a diagonally set ridge and trenched purlins. The lower end has a replacement softwood roof structure covering the entire house.