Huxtables Farmhouse

Huxstables Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating back to the early 16th century, with significant remodelling in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The building is constructed of unrendered stone rubble, topped with a concrete tiled roof featuring gable ends. It has an axial stone rubble stack and a brick stack at the right end. Originally a 3-room-and-cross-passage house, it was formerly an open hall house. The hall stack is unusually positioned away from the cross-passage, at the upper end of the hall. Two staircases are present; one was inserted into the cross-passage, and the other runs up the rear wall of the inner room.

The farmhouse is two storeys high and has a 3-window front. The windows are largely modern replacements, with 2-light casements having 2 panes per light, and two 3-light casements to the ground floor with 3 panes per light, flanking the plank front door. A pigeon-hole is located to the left of the right-hand top window. The end of the inner room is notably blind on both floors, primarily due to a concealed internal lateral stack that was originally placed in front of the inner room; the shaft of this stack has since been demolished. A dairy outshut is attached to the rear of the hall.

Inside, a low plank and muntin screen divides the hall from the cross-passage, consisting of 6 planks, with chamfered muntins. A doorway through the centre of the screen has had its lintel removed and now features a reset 4-plank door. A section of the rear screen was previously removed to create another doorway into the hall, but this has been filled in and the screen replaced in the same style. A chamfered jetty bressumer is situated above the screen, with mortices indicating the former presence of joists supporting a loft floor over the cross-passage, only one of which remains, exhibiting step-stopped chamfers. Another chamfered, step-stopped bressumer, together with the cross ceiling beam, chamfered with pyramid stops, supports an inserted hall ceiling. An integral bench sits below the hall window. The hall fireplace has dressed stone jambs and a slightly cambered stone arch instead of a typical lintel, and incorporates a brick-lined oven. A fine 4-centred arched doorway with a chamfered surround leads into the inner room to the right of the fireplace. The inner room features a roughly chamfered axial beam. A cambered brick arch frames the fireplace, which includes a further brick-lined bread oven. An old, possibly 18th-century, thin chamfered surround defines the doorway between the hall and the dairy.

Parts of the original roof structure remain, with more recent 20th-century roof timbers overlaid. Solid cob walls extend to the apex of the roof between the hall and the inner room, and between the cross-passage and the lower end. A single raised cruck truss is visible over the hall, with a morticed and tenoned collar, two tiers of threaded purlins, and a threaded ridge purlin – all heavily smoke-blackened. The purlins over the inner room are clean, and the two trusses over the lower end were likely replaced in the 19th century. This suggests that the inner room was originally open to the roof, and that the hall was jettied at the lower end. The lower end itself, as indicated by a straight joint to the rear wall, was probably rebuilt in the 17th century.