2, 3 And 4, Church Lane

A row of three houses at 2, 3, and 4 Church Lane, Swimbridge, dates to the late 15th or early 16th century, with significant remodelling in the 17th century and alterations in the 20th. The houses are built of painted rendered stone and cob, and have slate roofs with gable ends. Brick stacks are present at each end of each house. A tall, lateral rubble stack with a dripstone is located to the front of No.3, and a truncated lateral stack is present on No.4. The plan development is complex. No.3 appears to contain the hall, a through-passage, and part of the lower end of a 17th-century farmhouse. Blocked doorways in the hall suggest that No.2 was originally the inner room of the farmhouse, subsequently extended and remodelled into a separate cottage. No.4 was reportedly used as a shippon and store-shed in recent memory, aligning with its position as the lower end of the farmhouse. However, the roof structure of No.4 shows it was originally part of an open-hall house, suggesting a development sequence from right to left, with the hall being remodelled in the 17th century and the inner room extended in the 18th and 19th centuries. The houses are two storeys high, with a seven-window front of 2-light casements, featuring two panes per light. The left-hand bay projects slightly. Inside No.4, two raised cruck trusses are present, featuring two tiers of threaded purlins and a ridge purlin with cranked collars morticed into the soffits of the blades. Smoke blackening extends to the cob wall partition above the lower end of the through-passage, fading out towards the lower end bay. The truss nearest the right gable end is heavily soot-encrusted on one face and virtually clean on the other. The truss over the hall shows evidence of 17th-century remodelling with straight, heavy principals and lap-jointed collars. Stop-chamfered beams and most of the original floor joists remain in the hall.