Zeales

Zeales is a farmhouse, now a guest house, dating to the early to mid-18th century, and possibly incorporating earlier fabric. It is built of stone rubble with a rendered finish, and has a gable-ended roof covered in stone-slate tiles. Brick stacks are present. The house originally had a three-room and cross-passage plan, with a passage or entrance hall between the central and left-hand rooms. There are integral end stacks, an external lateral stack to the rear of the central room, and a square staircase projection to the left (west) of the rear stack. The layout suggests a substantial rebuilding of an earlier building, which may have retained some original elements.

The two-storey house has a roughly symmetrical four-bay front, with the right-hand windows spaced wider than the others. The upper floor has two 18th-century hipped dormers with 2-light, leaded wooden casements (rebuilt in the 20th century). Windows include 18th-century paired, boxed 12-pane glazing bar sashes to the first floor and 18th-century three-light wooden casements with H-L hinges on the ground floor. A 19th-century gabled wooden porch, supported by two octagonal wooden posts, shelters the doorway in the second bay from the left, which has a 20th-century half-glazed door. A 20th-century window is set into an 18th-century opening in the rear staircase projection, though the opening has been reduced in height.

The interior features a stone-flagged cross passage. The central ground-floor room has a roughly hewn cross beam and an old open fireplace to the rear with dressed sandstone jambs, a bread oven, and a wooden lintel with run-out stops. A dog-leg staircase, altered in the 20th century with winders, beaded square newel posts with moulded caps and toad-back handrails (along with 20 balustrades) is located at the rear. Original 18th-century doors with two raised and fielded panels and moulded architraves lead to the first floor. A further dog-leg attic staircase with winders and a balustrade to the landing, featuring column-on-vase balusters, square blocks, beaded square newel posts, and a toad-back handrail, is also present.