Haredon Farmhouse

Farmhouse. Dating to the late 15th century, with alterations circa the late 18th century, including the flooring of the hall. Constructed of stone rubble with a slate roof featuring hipped ends. The original plan comprised three rooms and a cross-passage, with a lateral hall chimney stack at the rear rising from a gabled projection and incorporating an internal newel staircase to one side. A further lateral stack is situated within the rear wall of the inner room. The lower end of the house was unheated. The building is one storey and attic, with a four-window front. A wide cross-passage doorway is located to the left of the centre, featuring an 18th-century panelled door and a slated hood. A large hall window is set within a projecting bay to the right of the cross-passage. All windows are 19th-century casements with glazing bars, and the roof incorporates two gabled dormers. The gable on the left-hand side of the front is slate-hung, likely representing a truncated end of a demolished wing. The house's unusual location, built across a slope with a significantly lower level at the rear (north), results in a rear doorway and stone steps providing access to the service end. There is no cross-passage rear doorway.

The interior features a wide cross-passage leading to a service room on the west side. The hall screen to the right of the passage appears to have been removed, though the top rail of a plank and muntin screen survives above a later partition. The blocked lateral fireplace on the rear wall of the hall has an internal newel staircase to its upper end. Stone partition walls are present between the hall and the inner room, and between the cross-passage and the lower service room. The hall and inner room lack exposed ceiling beams, and it appears the hall was floored as late as the 18th century, possibly during the same period as the installation of 18th-century joinery, including panelled doors, doorframes, cupboards, and internal window shutters. The roof is of jointed cruck construction, with three principal trusses in the hall, each featuring arch-braces to cranked collars with hollow chamfer moulding. Trenched purlins are chamfered with steps over two bays of the hall, and the rafters are also chamfered above the hall. Another pair of jointed crucks exists at the lower end. The apex of the roof space was ceiled and inaccessible during the 1984 survey. The attic rooms are papered and painted, making it difficult to determine the presence of any smoke-blackening. Haredon Farmhouse is an important and remarkably unaltered late medieval house.