Lemons Farmhouse

Lemons Farmhouse

A farmhouse of probably late 15th-century date, remodelled in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, with 20th-century alterations. The building is constructed of stone rubble and rendered cob, with a thatch roof that is gabled to the left and half-hipped to the right. Two tall stacks survive: a lateral hall stack with drip and offsets, and a tall axial stone rubble stack (formerly the gable end) with drip and tapered cap.

The farmhouse was originally an open hall house with low screen partitions arranged to a three-room through-passage plan, of which the upper inner room end has since been demolished. During the late 16th-century remodelling, the rear through-passage doorway was blocked by the insertion of a projecting stair turret, with a further stair turret added to the rear of the hall. In the 20th century, a barn or shippon outbuilding that was originally attached to the lower end was incorporated into the dwelling to form part of the house.

The building presents two storeys with a five-window range. The windows to the left end and centre feature eyebrow dormers containing small gables. A timber ovolo mullion window of three lights with two panes per light survives to the right of the stack; other fenestration is of 20th-century date. The ground floor includes a sash window of eight over three panes to the left end, and an ovolo moulded surround to the cross-passage doorway with weathered stops. A two-light casement with three panes per light stands to the right. A thatched lean-to roof covers a porch at the lower end, where the former outbuilding adjoins the main range; a bay at this lower end breaks forward slightly.

The interior retains fine quality features throughout the main range. The hall preserves a boxed-in bressumer of jettied downstand construction at its lower end, and a ceiling beam and bressumer at its upper end, both featuring impressive scroll-stopped chamfers. The rear of the hall contains a stair turret doorway with ovolo moulded surround and bulbous stops to the stiles. Winder staircases serve both the rear hall and the cross-passage stair turrets.

Fine plank and muntin screens flank the cross-passage. The hall-side screen is seven planks wide with chamfered muntins stopped near the base; its headrail is chamfered to the lower arris with a coved cornice above, which has been cut through to accommodate the chamfered ceiling joists with run-out stops when the floor was inserted. A segmental arched doorway, partly cased in, is positioned towards the centre. The lower-side screen measures five and a half planks wide and bears a chamfered headrail and carpenter marks. Two impressive four-centred arched doorways with chamfered surrounds stand towards the left end; the right is sealed with vertical boarding whilst the left retains a four-plank door. The lower end features a bench against the rear of the screen, formed from reused scratch-moulded crested panelling, with a tall shaped bench end. An ovolo moulded fireplace lintel and a scroll-stopped wide chamfered ceiling beam are present. Part of the screen extends to the upper storey, positioned slightly offset from the lower screen below; this upper portion is two planks wide with chamfered muntins stopped halfway up.

At the head of the hall stair turret stands a jointed chamfered post to the right of the doorway to the chamber over the hall, which has a chamfered surround. Part of the stile survives to the left-hand doorway, which would have served the chamber over the now-demolished upper end.

Two raised cruck trusses span the lower end of the hall and the lower end, each with morticed and tenoned cranked collars. Access to the roof space is possible only below the lower truss; the timbers here are heavily smoke-blackened right to the former gable end, providing further evidence, along with the pronounced change in floor levels, of the phased insertion of floors into this former open-hall house with low-screen partitions.