South Yarde Farmhouse

South Yarde Farmhouse

A farmhouse of exceptional architectural significance, probably dating from the late 15th or early 16th century, with substantial remodelling in the late 16th or early 17th century and some alterations of around the mid-19th century. The building is constructed of cob and stone rubble, whitewashed and rendered, with some brick repair on the rear north wall and right east end wall. The roof is currently covered with corrugated asbestos (thatched until 1953), hipped at the right end and gabled at the left end, which was formerly hipped. Two stacks with rendered shafts rise from the left end and axially to the left of centre.

South Yarde is the hall range of an exceptionally fine and unusual late medieval open hall house built to a courtyard plan. A parallel range across a narrow yard to the north, almost certainly the detached kitchen (North Yarde, separately listed), complemented this arrangement. The farmhouse originated as a single-depth, south-facing range with a three-room and cross-passage plan, with the lower end to the left (west). The roof timbers are smoke-blackened from the left end at least as far as the higher east end partition of the centre room, though there is no access to the roofspace over the right end room.

The hall itself was extraordinarily grand, comprising a two-bay central space with uniquely decorated roof timbers. The lower end, with a plainer but contemporary roof structure, presumably served as a service room and may have been open to the roof timbers or floored but open to the cross passage and hall above first-floor level. The inner right end room's original arrangement remains unclear without access to the roof space above it, though a stone winder stair from the rear of the hall in a stair projection may have provided access to a first-floor chamber or may date to the late 16th or early 17th-century remodelling.

This remodelling programme introduced an axial hall stack into the cross passage, creating a lobby entrance at the front (south). The centre room was floored with a fine intersecting beam ceiling, and the stair was either added or adapted at this date to provide access to the chamber over the centre room. The lower end may also have been floored at the same date; the stack at this end is likely a post-17th-century addition, while the inner room remains unheated. Post-17th-century modifications to the lower end involved creation of an axial passage at the back between the hall and the left end wall, probably in the mid to late 19th century—the date of the chimneypiece in the lower end room, which served as a parlour at that time. A small salting house has been removed from the inner room, and a dairy has been added outside the wall of the original building on the north-east corner. It appears likely that North Yarde continued to function as the kitchen into the 17th century. The plan of South Yarde has remained unchanged since the 19th century, and its earlier phases of development remain evident.

The exterior is two storeys with an asymmetrical three-window south front. A gabled porch marks the lobby entrance to the left of centre, and a 20th-century front door has been added. A plank door to the inner room on the right replaces a former mullioned window (information from the owner). There are three ground-floor and three first-floor windows, all 2-light 19th or early 20th-century windows with glazing bars except the first-floor right window, which has three lights.

The interior is remarkable. The hall in the centre features a fine intersecting beam ceiling forming nine panels with richly moulded beams. The panels are cross-joisted with joists that are scratch-moulded on their soffits and roll-moulded to the sides. The stone stack has a cambered lintel concealed by a 19th-century mantelshelf with a centrally positioned bread oven. The hall-to-inner-room partition is a screen with a fine four-centred arched chamfered timber doorframe. To the right of this doorframe, the screen is faced with circa mid-17th-century panelling featuring a fine shaped bench end to the hall bench. A circa late 17th-century panelled door is situated at the bottom of the stair. The inner room has a chamfered axial beam with only one stop visible at the screen end. The lower end room has no exposed ceiling beams and a 19th-century chimneypiece. The stone stair has been cased in timber. On the first floor, the chamber over the inner room is plain. The chamber over the hall is open to the apex of the roof and is divided from an axial passage parallel to the north wall by a simple head-height partition. The room above the lower end has a plaster ceiling.

The roof is extraordinary both for its construction and for an unfinished scheme of carved decoration on the main truss over the hall. There are four jointed cruck trusses with feet descending to the ground (information from the owner). The centre two trusses feature chamfered arch braces, with chamfers continued on the crucks, which have a moulded feature resembling a capital at the springing of the arches. Three tiers of threaded purlins, richly moulded with keeled pyramid stops, are complemented by three tiers of upward curving wind braces. The upper pair of wind braces was removed in the bay into which the stack was inserted. The ridge is most unusual: V-shaped in section and therefore appearing to be made of two timbers, although it has been cut from a single piece with each half moulded and stopped to match the purlins.

On the east face of the main hall truss is an unfinished carving scheme, apparently intended to cover this face of the truss with panels of trefoil-headed blind tracery. The carving is complete only on part of the north side of the truss, while other parts show initial phases of carving before detail was refined. Trefoiled panels are known from the roof of Colston's House, the home of a Bristol merchant, from a drawing of 1821, but no other comparable scheme is known to date. The truss over the lower end is plainer, with unmoulded purlins "dropped at their west ends and notched into the framework of the inserted stack." The east end truss is infilled with heavy framing, and evidence of smoke staining has been observed under the plaster.

The settlement was owned by Richard de Yerda in 1211 and remained in the Yard family until 1615. Richard Yard (1450–c.1514) was probably responsible for the present house. The building has significant group value with North Yarde and with a farmyard of traditional farm buildings to the south. South Yarde is an outstanding building. The medieval roof is a remarkable survival, and the unfinished state of its carved decoration provides important evidence of the methods of a late medieval carver. The late 16th or early 17th-century remodelling is also fine, and the house has not suffered damaging alterations during the 20th century while in the hands of the Rolle family.