Higher Week Farmhouse

BURRINGTON SS 61 NW

5/15 Higher Week Farmhouse - - II Farmhouse. Circa 1600. Rendered stone rubble and cob. Bitumenised slate roof. Axial brick stack and tall rendered stack to front end of lean-to at left (lower) end. The surviving fabric of the original house consists of hall to right heated by axial stack backing onto cross-passage. The roof timbers over the hall appear to show faint sighs of smoke-blackening, suggesting this part was originally open to the roof for a short period before the stack was inserted. There is a solid stone and cob wall partition between the hall and inner room, the latter definitely being a later, probably C19 addition. At the same time, the house was extended at the rear to accommodate a double flight of stairs, each flight running up beside the rear wall of the hall, 1 serving the room over the cross-passage, the other the chambers over the hall and inner room. The original staircase appears to have been originally housed to the rear lower end of the hall, beside the axial stack and hall/cross-passage doorway. In the late C19, a lean-to was added at the lower end, a doorway being pierced through the solid gable end wall on the lower side of the cross-passage. It is not clear, therefore, whether the lean-to replaced a lower service end or outbuildings, or whether this is an unusual example of a hall and end passage type plan. The unheated inner room, however, was in use until recently as a dairy and salting house, suggesting the lower end, if it existed, did not accommodate service rooms. In C20, 1 of the flights of stairs was removed, the doorway at the rear of the hall blocked up and access to the stairs opened up at the rear of the cross-passage. 2 storeys. 3-window range. C20 fenestration except central upper storey window which has a late C19 3-light casement. C20 gabled porch with slate roof. Interior: Hall fireplace has chamfered timber lintel and bread oven. Creamery niche in front wall beside the fireplace jamb. No exposed ceiling beams. Original roof structure survives over hall only, with one raised cruck truss with trenched purlins, diagonally set ridge purlin and straight morticed and tenoned collar. Probably in C18 the former gable end of the hall was converted to a hip. The additional of the inner room and rear extension involved the superimposition of a wide span roof structure with a much higher ridge level.

Listing NGR: SS6107418632