West Hele Farmhouse

West Hele Farmhouse is a farmhouse probably dating from the late 15th century, with alterations made in the 17th and 18th centuries, and extended at the rear in the early 19th century. The building is constructed of painted rendered stone rubble and cob, with a half-hipped thatch roof. A brick stack stands at the left end, and a brick shaft serves a rear lateral hall stack enclosed by a gable-ended rear wing with an asbestos slate roof and brick stack at its right end.

The building follows a 3-room and through-passage plan, with the lower end positioned to the left. The hall/through-passage partition was removed in the 20th century when a staircase was inserted in the former passage. A 2-storey parallel service range extends to the rear of the hall and inner room, with a single-storey outshut to the rear of the lower end.

The exterior presents 2 storeys in a 4-window range, though fenestration dates to the 20th century. A gabled thatch roof covers a brick porch with shaped bargeboards.

Internally, all three principal rooms have single cross ceiling beams, all unchamfered. The cambered hall fireplace lintel has been replaced in the 20th century. An internal cupboard with raised and fielded panelled doors is situated in the front wall. The stair originally stood beside the stack on the lower side. 19th-century joinery is principally intact. The rear wing contains a kitchen fireplace with a chamfered timber lintel, a bread oven, and a 19th-century brick oven at the base of the hearth.

The roof structure is a remarkably intact late medieval feature, containing 4 cruck trusses, each of different design. The truss spanning the inner room and hall partition is a jointed cruck with a cranked morticed and tenoned collar and lightly trenched purlins. Most of the original partition infill below this truss has been removed, though the cob packing between the truss and rafters survives, smoke-blackened on the hall side only. The second truss, positioned over the hall, is a raised cruck with a cranked morticed and tenoned collar and an unusual apex consisting of a double yoke, the upper yoke supporting the diagonally set ridge purlin. The third truss, spanning the lower end, is also a raised cruck but features an arched collar with a thin soffit chamfer. These three trusses are positioned to form four roughly equal-sized bays. A fourth truss, standing over the partition between the lower end and passage, has straight principals of much lighter scantling, an X apex, and a thin halved and lapped cambered collar. The wattle and daub partition below the collar remains largely intact and is smoke-blackened on the hall side. Above the collar, horizontal planking has been nailed to the face of the truss and is also smoke-blackened. This truss itself is more heavily smoke-blackened on the hall side and may be a later insertion, with the purlins interrupted at this point and merely resting on the backs of the principals. At each end, the roof has been modified to a hipped structure using some of the original rafters. Immediately below the hall truss, the battens on each side of the ridge have been removed, and a peg-hole through the centre of the hall truss collar suggests a possible smoke louvre may have existed. All roof members, including battens, rafters, and the entire underside of the thatch are very heavily smoke-blackened, strongly indicating that the hall was ceiled at a relatively late date.

The remarkably intact roof structure is smoke-blackened throughout, with closed trusses present on the lower side of the former passage and at the upper end of the hall. Both trusses show partitions smoke-blackened on the hall side only, suggesting that the lower end and inner room were ceiled first, followed much later by the hall. The heavy smoke-blackening and rough ceiling beams throughout indicate a relatively late date for the sequence, probably well into the 17th century, with the hall possibly ceiled even in the 18th century.