Higher Rookabeare Farmhouse

Higher Rookabeare Farmhouse is a farmhouse with probable origins in the 16th century, with the lower end rebuilt in the early 17th century. It features rendered stone rubble and some cob on the left side, while the through-passage and lower end have been unusually rebuilt with early 17th-century handmade bricks, now painted. The farmhouse has a slate roof with gable ends, a truncated lateral front hall stack, and a diagonally set brick stack at the right end. It has a 3-room and through-passage plan, with the hall and a small dairy at the higher end to the left, and the lower end rebuilt as a parlour in the 17th century. The building is two storeys high and has a four-window range of 20th-century two-light casements, each with eight panes per light. There is a two-light dairy window at the left end and two three-light casements flanking a plank door leading to the through-passage doorway. At the rear of the hall, there is a small single-storey late 19th-century brick kitchen extension.

Inside, the farmhouse has been largely altered in the 19th century, and the roof structure was replaced in the 20th century. However, the parlour and hall still feature scroll-stopped chamfered ceiling beams. The parlour retains a 17th-century plasterwork overmantel with moulded top and bottom rails, a strapwork surround with initials GP to the left and WP to the right of a central plaque that displays a shield and achievement, believed to be the insignia of the Company of Spanish Merchants.