Park Farmhouse

Park Farmhouse is a farmhouse, probably dating from the early 16th century, with remodelling in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and later alterations from the 19th and 20th centuries. The construction is of rendered stone rubble and cob, with a thatched roof featuring a plain ridge and a half-hip at the left end, with a gable end to the right. A half-hipped thatch roof covers a former outbuilding attached to the front left end. The farmhouse has a tall front lateral hall stack with a brick shaft, and brick shafts to stone rubble stacks at each gable end.

The original layout comprised three rooms with a cross-passage containing a staircase towards the lower end on the right. A former outbuilding, possibly originally a cider-house, is attached at right angles to the front left end and incorporated into the dwelling. A solid wall partition rises to the apex of the roof between the hall and inner room; the rough ceiling beams and straight joint suggest the inner room is a complete rebuild. The ridge purlin was roughly sawn off over the upper end of the hall, though it clearly extended beyond it originally. It appears that the hall and lower end were originally open to the roof, with the lower floor level raised over the lower end, suggesting it may have been ceiled before the hall proper.

The farmhouse is two storeys high with a three-window front. All windows are 19th-century 2-light casements with six panes per light. The outer windows have raised sills and gabled half dormers. On the ground floor are 2-light 6-pane windows to the inner room, a 20th-century window to the hall, and a 12-paned horizontal sliding sash window to the right of a plank door. The plank door itself has a small 3-light window on its inner face. Outshuts with a pantiled roof extend to the rear of the inner room.

Inside, the lower end and hall fireplaces have been rebuilt. The lower end features a late 18th/early 19th century decorative moulded plaster ceiling rose. A winder staircase is located to the rear of the cross-passage. A chamfered cross ceiling beam, possibly a jetty beam, is found in the lower end of the hall, featuring hollow step stops. The inner room has two rough axial ceiling beams. Most of the 19th-century joinery is intact throughout.

The roof includes a truss over the lower side of the cross-passage exhibiting an Alcock type ‘E’ apex with diagonally set ridge and trenched purlins; the feet of the principals are not visible. The cruck truss in the hall has roughly sawn principals on one face only, with a removed mortised and tenoned collar, and a short saddle carrying the diagonally set ridge purlin. All roof members over the hall and lower end, including rafters and battens (excluding the thatch), are smoke-blackened. An 18th/early 19th-century truss is positioned over the inner room, with clean roof members, but the hall ridge purlin has been sawn off over the hall/inner room partition.