Snail House

Snail House is a farmhouse dating from circa 1840-45, when an earlier house was substantially remodelled and enlarged. The building is constructed of colourwashed slate rubble with a slate-hung left-hand (south-west) end wall, beneath an asbestos slate roof with gabled ends and deep eaves at the front. The chimneys consist of gable-end stacks with red brick shafts (the right-hand stack projects), a central rear lateral stack with brick shaft, and a disused and truncated lateral stack at the rear of the back range.

The house follows a three-room plan in the main range. The left and centre rooms are the principal rooms with a stairhall between them. The left room is heated from the gable-end stack; the centre room has a rear lateral stack; the right-hand third room serves as the kitchen and is heated from the gable-end stack. Two unheated service rooms and a back staircase occupy an outshut behind the centre and right-hand portions, accessible via an axial passage to a service entrance at the right-hand end. A redundant lateral stack remains on the rear wall of the outshut, and a straight masonry joint on the front wall between the centre and right-hand rooms indicates the plan resulted from remodelling of an earlier structure.

The exterior presents two storeys with an asymmetrical two-window front. The left and centre windows are symmetrically disposed around a central doorway, while the right-hand section contains a single-window bay; a straight masonry joint separates these two parts. All windows are 19th-century sashes with glazing bars and flat brick arches—large 20-pane sashes on the ground floor and smaller 16-pane sashes on the first floor, all with small horns. The doorway to the left of centre has a mid-19th-century fielded nine-panel door and a 19th-century open porch with moulded wooden column and pilasters supporting an entablature canopy. The rear wall of the main front range is blind except for a tall narrow 19th-century stair window with a straight head and 16 panes.

The main range roof is carried down as a catslide over the service range to the left at the back. This range features various asymmetrically disposed 19th- and 20th-century casements and a redundant truncated projecting lateral stack with set-offs. The right-hand (north-east) end displays a projecting gable-end stack with set-offs, a 19th-century three-light casement on the first floor, and an open-fronted outshut with a scantle lean-to roof and a 19th-century divided plank door with a circa 19th or early 20th-century two-light casement to the right. To the left of this end, in the angle with the lean-to, sits a large granite apple-crusher.

The interior retains most original joinery including panelled doors, cupboards and shutters, though no moulded plaster cornices survive and the chimneypieces in the two principal front rooms have been removed. The staircase is a mid-19th-century open-well design with a closed string, stick balusters and a moulded mahogany handrail wreathed over a column newel. The right-hand room (the kitchen) features rough chamfered cross-beams and a kitchen fireplace, now blocked with brick and fitted with a shelf above. The first floor was not inspected, but panelled doors and chimneypieces are said to survive there.