Lower Birbrook Farmhouse

Farmhouse. Dating from the late 15th or early 16th century, with a remodelling in the late 16th century. The building is constructed of rendered stone and cob, with an asbestos slate roof featuring gable ends. A rendered stack is located at the left end, and a tall front lateral hall stack rises with offsets and a tapered cap, having been heightened in brick. The farmhouse originally comprised three rooms and a through-passage, forming a former open hall house with a stair turret and later enclosed by a 19th-century rear outshut with tiled roofs. The design is of two storeys, with a three-window range to the front. The windows are 19th and 20th-century additions, consisting of a 2-light casement with 2 panes per light on each floor to the left of the porch, which has a slated pentice roof butting into the stack and housing a 4-panelled door, the upper ends glazed. A 2-light casement with 6 panes per light sits above the hall casement, which itself is a 3-light casement with 2 panes per light. The upper end of the farmhouse is slightly recessed and contains 2-light casements on each floor, with 2 panes per light above and 6 panes per light below. Internally, the inner room features axial chamfered ceiling beams to the inner room and hall; the hall exhibits hollow step stops. Jowled heads are present on the jambs of the doorway between the hall and inner room, with an arched lintel having been removed. A creamery niche with a small cupboard is located to the right above an integral bench that runs into the front window recess. Original slate dairy fittings remain in the rear outshut. A chamfered door surround with scroll stops decorates the stair turret, which contains an original dog leg staircase with wide treads and a moulded handrail, splat balusters with bar stops to the tops of arris arms and chamfered scroll-stopped newels. Three moulded plasterers’ marks are said to be visible in the chamber over the lower end partition wall. The roof structure over the lower end was replaced in the 20th century. Above the hall is a jointed cruck truss with steeply cranked, morticed and tenoned collar and threaded purlins and a ridge purlin. A closed lath and plaster partition divides the lower end of the hall. The hall/inner room partition also rises as a full-height partition to a closed truss with principals of lighter scantling, lapped to form an X apex with a thin, morticed and tenoned collar. The timbers over the hall and inner room are heavily smoke-blackened, suggesting the house was formerly open to the roof, with phased insertion of floors—the higher floor level in the chamber over the hall suggesting this was the last to be ceiled.