Lower Hill Farmhouse And Adjoining Stable

Lower Hill Farmhouse and adjoining stable date from around 1500 to 1550, with alterations in the 17th century, and minor changes in the 18th and late 19th centuries. A major refurbishment occurred in the mid-20th century, including new windows and a replacement roof. The farmhouse is constructed of coursed stone rubble, with some cob in the front wall on either side. The stable has a rubble ground floor and a cob first floor. The roofs are now covered with corrugated asbestos, previously thatched. The farmhouse originally had a three-room and cross-passage plan, open to the roof. It comprises a central hall, a former cross passage and service room to the left (south-west), and an inner room to the right (north-east). In the 17th century, a first floor was inserted, a lateral stack was added to the rear of the hall (possibly predating the floor), and the inner room was likely enlarged, with an external end stack. A lean-to dairy was added to the rear of the upper room, and a stable was built at the lower end (south-west), likely in the 18th century. A dividing wall between the cross passage and hall was removed in the 19th century, blocking the original entrance, and a new entrance was created between the hall and upper room, along with an inserted staircase rising from a new doorway. A 17th-century winder staircase is located in a projection at the rear of the lower room.

The exterior is asymmetrical, with a four-window front featuring 20th-century wooden casement windows. One ground-floor window has a segmental stone-arched head. There is a 20th-century half-glazed door between the first and second windows from the right, and another half-glazed door to the far left. A former cross-passage doorway is visible as a straight joist in the second window from the left. The stable attached to the left has a boarded door on the ground floor and a hatch with old strap hinges to the left, along with a lean-to extension with garage doors.

Inside the house, the hall features 17th-century scratch-moulded cambered cross beams and joists. A reused chamfered cross beam, set on edge, replaced a former wall or screen between the cross passage and hall. A blocked fireplace is visible in the rear wall and cupboards are set into the wall opposite the former cross-passage doorway, which may have covered a former rear doorway. The hall window has jambs extending to the floor level. The right-hand ground-floor room has a chamfered spine beam and a blocked fireplace with an unchamfered wooden lintel. An old wooden winder staircase is situated at the rear of the left-hand room. Cob walls between the service room and former cross passage, and between the hall and inserted staircase, continue into the roofspace. Significant remains of a late-Medieval smoke-blackened roof remain, featuring two (probably jointed) cruck trusses at the upper and lower ends of the hall, trenched purlins, and a diagonally-set ridge-piece, with a 20th-century roof construction above. The stable interior features a cobbled floor and wooden stalls.