Beere Farmhouse And Adjoining Outbuilding And Stable To West

Beere Farmhouse and Adjoining Outbuilding and Stable to West

Beere Farmhouse is a substantial rural house with associated farm buildings, now converted to residential use. The main house dates to around 1500, with significant alterations in the early to mid-17th century and further changes probably in the mid to late 19th century.

The building is constructed of rendered and painted stone rubble and cob, with 19th-century sandstone additions featuring red-brick dressings. The roofs are gable-ended, with corrugated asbestos covering the older sections and Welsh slate on the 19th-century additions. Rendered stone stacks with weatherings rise at the axial and gable ends.

The house follows a former three-room plan with a cross or through passage, facing south on sloping ground. Originally a Late Medieval open hall house, it consisted of a hall with an inner room to the right and a cross passage to the left leading to a service room. The hall was formerly open to the roof along its length, likely divided only by low partitions. During the 17th century, a first floor was inserted, probably initially only over the service and inner rooms. An axial hall stack was built at the lower end of the hall, backing onto the cross passage, with an external end stack serving the inner room. The high corbelled fireplace lintel in the hall indicates it once heated an open hall that remained unceiled. The hall floor was probably not inserted until the middle or end of the 17th century, with eaves raised notably higher over the hall section at the same period. The service room was also altered in the 17th century, with a one-room addition to the left (now the outbuilding, marked by a straight joint to the rear), dating to either the 17th century or later, possibly the 18th century. A mid to late 19th-century kitchen wing with an external end stack was added to the rear of the hall, suggesting the service function of the lower end room had ended by then. A lean-to outshut stands at the rear of the inner wing, dating to either the 18th or 19th century. A mid to late 19th-century stable wing was added at right angles to the front of the left-hand end.

The building stands two storeys, with the stable wing rising to one storey with an attic above.

The front elevation is roughly symmetrical with four window openings. These are now fitted with late 20th-century plastic windows of two, three and four lights, replacing 19th-century wooden casements. The former cross-passage entrance lies between the first and second windows from the left, accessed by a 20th-century concrete steps and a boarded door. The right-hand end stack features canted sides and offsets. The stable occupies the left side, with a segmental-headed boarded stable door and a passageway entrance to the right with a wooden lintel. The gable end facing front has a boarded loft door and a ground-floor boarded stable door. The left-hand side has a 19th-century window and a boarded door to the passage.

The interior retains significant medieval and 17th-century features. The hall contains a pair of chamfered spine beams with stepped runout stops. The large 17th-century open fireplace features a cambered wooden lintel with a chamfer returning to a pair of chamfered shaped wooden corbels, stone jambs, and a bread oven with brick jambs. The inner room has a 17th-century chamfered cross beam with stepped runout stop, accompanied by chamfered half beams. Traces of the Late Medieval smoke-blackened roof survive, consisting principally of a side-pegged jointed cruck truss at the left-hand (lower) end of the hall in front of the stack, with a cambered collar and mortice-and-tenoned apex featuring a V-shaped notch for a former diagonally-set ridge piece and trenches for former purlins. A possibly lightly-smoked ridge piece and purlin remain. Two probably 17th-century principal-rafter trusses stand at the right-hand end of the hall.