Peeks Farmhouse

Peeks Farmhouse is a house, formerly a farmhouse, of probable 16th-century origin that was substantially remodelled in the early to mid-17th century and again around 1830, with further refurbishment in the late 20th century.

The building is constructed of rendered stone rubble, with pebble dash at the front and scantle slate hanging at the rear. The roof is thatched with gabled ends; the rear stair tower has a half-hipped scantle slate roof, and the rear outshut has an asbestos tile roof. The chimneys are rendered with stacks of tapered shafts. The right-hand stack projects and has set-offs, while the left-hand stack does not project but carries a slate cornice at about first floor level. The lateral stack at the back has a tall thin rendered shaft.

The plan consists of three rooms with a cross-passage between the centre room and the right-hand room, leading to a stair tower at the back. Rooms at either end are heated by gable-end stacks. A lateral stack serves the centre room. An axial corridor in an outshut behind the centre and left-hand rooms links the stair and cross-passage to the left end room. Another outshut stands behind the right-hand room.

The existing three-room plan likely results from early to mid-17th-century remodelling of an earlier house, whose lower end and passage immediately to the left have been demolished. The present left end room was probably the hall, and the current gable-end stack was the former hall's axial stack, which backed onto the now-demolished passage. The remodelling extended the house at its higher right end by replacing an inner room with two parlours separated by a passage leading to the rear stair tower, with the former hall becoming the kitchen. Around 1830, the façade was refenestrated and a shallow outshut corridor was built at the back to provide access from the kitchen to the stairs and passage. Another small outshut behind the right-hand room was probably added later in the 19th century.

The front elevation is two storeys with an asymmetrical 1:3 window range. The three right-hand windows are symmetrically arranged around a central doorway; these are 20th-century replacements of early 19th-century tripartite sashes with glazing bars, except the centre first-floor window, which is an early 19th-century 12-pane sash. The central round-headed doorway has a blind semi-circular fanlight, a ledged door, and a 20th-century gable porch (scheduled for replacement in 1987). The left-hand windows create the asymmetry: a 12-pane sash on each floor, with the ground floor a 20th-century replacement and the first floor an earlier replacement of the original early 19th-century sash.

On the rear elevation, the gable-end fireplace in the left end room is blocked, though a dressed slate jamb survives and the lintel has been replaced. The newel stairs in the rear left corner of this room have been removed from their turret. The right end room's fireplace is blocked by a later fireplace. An early 19th-century dog-leg staircase occupies the rear stair tower; only the balustrade at the top survives, comprising stick balusters, a column newel, and a moulded handrail.

The first-floor chamber at the right end has a fireplace with an ovolo and fillet moulded timber lintel with bar hollow stops. The left-end chamber has a fireplace with a chamfered timber lintel with bar stops, set on a granite corbel that replaces an earlier timber corbel. Some early to mid-19th-century panelled doors survive.

The roof structure over the right end contains three trusses with chambered collars and notched cap joists to straight principals, which have mortice and tenoned apexes, threaded purlins, and ridge-piece. The three trusses over the left end have collars lapped to the face of the principals and trenched purlins. Several reused blackened timbers survive, possibly salvaged material from a fire at the left end or from the roof of a former open hall.