Marsh Farmhouse, Including Rear Wall To Rear Court Yard

Farmhouse. Dating from the 15th century, it was altered in the 17th century and extended and partly remodeled in the late 18th or early 19th century. The farmhouse is constructed of painted stone and cob, with a slate roof featuring gable ends. A substantial rubble stack with offsets and a drip sits at the left end, and a large rubble stack with offsets and a drip is centrally located on the front. Brick shafts are present on the rear gable end and to the side of the cross-wing. The original layout comprised an open hall and cross-wing, with a rear extension, potentially representing a late 18th or early 19th-century addition or remodeling of an earlier outbuilding. A lean-to roof covers the dairy outshut in the rear angle.

The main range has a three-window front; on the left side are two 19th-century three-light casements with eight panes per light, while on the right is a similar window with six panes per light, and a 19th-century three-light window with eight panes per light. A slatted canopy shelters the through-passage porch, which has seats built into the side walls. The original C17 ovolo-moulded door surround retains its plank door, complete with cover strips. Inside, portions of a plank and muntin screen remain, notable for its exceptionally wide planks, and largely encased. Stop-chamfered beams and bressumers are present in the hall and inner room. The inner room’s fireplace has stone jambs and a 20th-century lintel, while a moulded bressumer suggests this room was always floored over. The roof structure above is particularly fine, featuring four large arch-braced trusses in the hall with threaded purlins and ridge purlin. The trusses originally rested on hollow-with-cyma-reversa moulded wall plates, of which sections remain in the center two bays to the rear. The arch braces have ogee-fillets and hollow-chamfered moulded soffits. The truss at the inner end of the hall is moulded on its inner face only, and a solid stone wall defines the partition with the two-storeyed cross-wing. The hall’s central trusses show only slight signs of smoke blackening, suggesting a fireplace may have always been present. The cross-wing’s roof incorporates trusses with cranked collars morticed and tenoned into the principals, with threaded purlins and ridge purlin. The rear extension of the cross-wing has a 20th-century roof structure. Several pieces of early joinery survive, including C17 doors to the first-floor rooms.