Bolberry Farmhouse

Bolberry Farmhouse is a house that was formerly a farmhouse, dating from the 16th century with remodelling in the 17th century and additions from the 19th and 20th centuries. The building features rendered stone walls that may include some cob, and it has a hipped thatch roof. There is a brick stack at the left-hand end and one rear lateral stack.

The layout consists of a three-room-and-through-passage plan, with the lower end to the left. The lower room is currently heated by the stack in the end wall, although it previously had a rear lateral stack that has been removed. This stack likely pre-dated the end stack unless there were originally two rooms at this end, which would be unusual. The hall also had a rear lateral stack for heating. A thick wall separates the hall from the inner room, but this wall does not extend into the roof space. Above the inner room is the earliest cruck truss, suggesting that the house was originally built as a hall house with a central hearth open to the roof, as indicated by the slightly darkened truss. If a central hearth existed, it would have been replaced by a chimney soon after, as the truss is only slightly darkened. In the 19th and 20th centuries, outshuts were added along the rear wall.

The exterior of the farmhouse is two storeys high with an asymmetrical five-window front. The three left-hand windows on the first floor are late 18th or early 19th century 12-pane horizontal sliding sashes. To the right of these is a small 17th-century two-light ovolo-moulded wooden mullion window, followed by an early 19th-century 20-pane hornless sash in a half dormer. Below, there are tall 20th-century three-light casements and a 20th-century plank door to the right of centre.

Inside, there is a chamfered wooden lintel above the hall fireplace. The inner room features a massive waney cruck truss with a morticed apex and collar halved on, with the timbers darkened but not black. Other trusses in the building are 18th-century A-frames.