Wets Hildrew Farmhouse

Farmhouse. Dating from the late 15th or early 16th century, it was remodelled in the late 16th or early 17th century, with 20th-century alterations. The exterior is rendered stone and cob, with a thatched roof featuring gable ends. Brick-heightened stacks are located at the left end and along the central axis. A front lateral stack, heating the right-hand inner room, has offsets and a brick shaft. The original plan comprised three rooms, a former through-passage and an open hall house, with an axial hall stack inserted almost directly into the through-passage. This caused the passage to become steeply cranked around the rear of the stack, the lower partition having been removed, and the rear doorway blocked. There are two adjoining service wings to the rear of the inner room. The wing on the left was likely an addition from the 17th century, while the wing on the right is probably from the 19th century. These have been altered in the 20th century and now share a single roof, creating an overall T-shaped plan. A lean-to dairy is located at the rear of the hall and lower end. The two-storey farmhouse has a three-window front, with 19th- and 20th-century windows. These include a 2-light casement with 8 panes per light at each end of the front face, and a 3-light and 2-light casement above two 2-light casements, all with 6 panes per light to the right. Part of the hall and inner room section was built out during the late 16th or early 17th-century remodelling. A gabled, tiled-roof porch with a 4-panelled door (the upper panels glazed) fronts the former through-passage, while a monopitch tiled roof covers a porch built over an inserted doorway at the lower left end. Inside, the lower end retains a step-stopped chamfered bressumer and cross ceiling beam, the latter having a segmental section cut out at its front end, possibly to accommodate the head of a pump or pulley, as it sits directly over a covered well. A fireplace has been covered over in the 20th century, but the lintel remains. A newel staircase with original wooden treads winds up beside the front of the stack. The hall displays a chamfered bressumer and cross ceiling beams with hollow step stops. The dais bench has been removed, but the carved bench end is still in place. Old ledged doors with chamfered, scroll-stopped surrounds lead to the chamber above the hall and to the chamber above the 17th-century rear wing. The roof space over the main range is largely inaccessible, but a massive raised cruck truss with morticed and tenoned cranked collar, with feet set very low, is situated over the hall, immediately in front of the hall stack, indicating a former open hall with floors inserted in the late 16th or early 17th century. A solid cob partition rises to the apex of the roof between the hall and inner room; the roof structure over the inner room appears to have been replaced when the front wall at that end was built out during the ceiling of the hall. A typical 17th-century truss is in situ over the rear service wing, with a 20th-century roof superimposed.