Poyers Hotel And Attached Barn

This is a 15th-century farmhouse, now a hotel, largely refenestrated in the early 19th century. The building is constructed of whitewashed cob and rubble, with a wheat-reed thatched roof covered with rush matting to the front. There are stacks at the gable ends and a lateral stack to the rear. The original layout comprised three rooms and a through-passage, once an open hall, with lower thatched extensions to the left gable end—showing brick quoining—and at a right angle to the upper end of the main range. A long cob barn with a hipped thatched roof extends at a right angle to the rear of the lower end and has been converted into chalets. The front has an asymmetrical 4-window, 2-storey appearance, featuring three 19th-century timber sash windows with eyebrow dormers and a smaller 2-light casement on each floor at the upper end. The lower end has three 18th- and 19th-century hornless timber sashes, each with eight panes over eight panes, and a single-storey thatched porch with a six-panelled door set in a deep reveal, where the upper two panels are glazed. A single 2-light casement window is also present in the lower extension. The hall retains two partially patched raised cruck trusses with cambered collars, mortices in the soffits, and removed arch-braces. The blades, supporting a single set of purlins and possibly formerly a second tier of threaded purlins above, do not meet but are joined by a short saddle with no ridge purlin above. Heavy smoke-blackening is visible to the lower end, though inspection of the roofspace was restricted, meaning that roof timbers may have been replaced at that end. The barn has been significantly altered, with most original roof trusses replaced, except for the fourth truss from the east end, which retains raised cruck blades with short yokes, original purlins extending to the flanking trusses only, and has had collar and arch-bracing removed.