Combeshead Farmhouse Including Garden Area Wall Adjoining North

Combeshead Farmhouse and Adjoining Garden Area Wall

This is a farmhouse with adjoining wall, dating from around the early 17th century but substantially rearranged and remodelled in around the early 19th century, with little change since then.

The building is constructed of slate rubble with the left-hand gable end hung in slate. The roof is covered with grouted and slurried scantle slate, with the left end gabled and the right end hipped, retaining circa 17th-century crested ridge tiles. A slate-hung chimney stack stands at the left gable end. The rear has a large projecting slate rubble lateral stack with set-offs and a massive shaft, heightened in red brick in the late 19th or 20th century.

The original early 17th-century house facing south was probably two storeys with two rooms and a central through passage. The parlour on the left was heated from an end stack, while the larger hall and kitchen on the right was heated from a rear lateral stack. A newel stair turret stands in front of the parlour, adjoining the left side of the open-fronted porch.

In the early 19th century the house was turned back to front. The through passage was widened and a framed staircase inserted into what became the back of the new stairhall, blocking the original newel stairs. The parlour was partitioned to create a small parlour and small unheated room. At the lower right east end, an addition was built, partitioned to form a dairy at the new front and a cellar behind, with a cross-passage separating them from the original lower end of the house. Part of the original lower east end wall was demolished and a new partition inserted. An outshut was added at the new front (north) of the lower passage, and a low wall was built forming a small garden area in front of the house.

The exterior presents two storeys with an asymmetrical south front. There are four first-floor windows not aligned over three ground-floor windows, all circa early 20th-century three-light casements with glazing bars and slate cills, except the hall window to the right of centre, which is a longer four-light window, and the right-hand windows on both floors, which are two-light casements. The doorway to the left of centre has a slate rubble open-fronted porch with a slate lean-to roof. A rectangular projecting stair turret adjoins the porch to the left, with the main roof carried down over it and a very small window below the eaves. A 20th-century concrete block lateral chimney shaft stands to the right of the front.

The rear (north) elevation has circa early 20th-century two-light casements with slate cills, disposed towards the right, with three on the first floor and two on the ground floor either side of a 20th-century glazed door in the original rear doorway. To the left of centre stands the large projecting lateral chimney stack with slate weathered set-offs. To the left of the stack is a narrow but deep later lean-to outshut with a small gable-ended outbuilding in its left angle. At the far right end is a rendered taking buttress. Slate weathering survives for a pentice roof that has been removed from above the doorway and ground-floor windows.

The lower slate rubble garden area wall is integral with the outshut on the left, continues along the front of the house and returns to the right of the doorway, presumably added with the outshut.

The interior has been little altered since the 19th century, with panelled and plank doors and plastered ceilings throughout. The cross-beam in the parlour is chamfered with hollow step stops. The hall ceiling is plastered over, and the hall has a rear lateral fireplace that has been blocked with a 20th-century grate. The early 19th-century stairhall contains circa early 19th-century fielded panel doors to the hall and parlour, and an early 19th-century framed open-well staircase at the back with stick balusters, square newels, moulded handrail and closed string.

The roof is of 19th or 20th-century nailed softwood trusses.

The house stands at the head of a coombe on slate bedrock. The original south-facing front overlooks ground that drops sharply in front of the small garden. At the west parlour end the ground is much lower, and at the east kitchen end it slopes away down the valley. The ground at the back (north) is higher; the north became the new front in the early 19th century, facing the farm buildings which were probably built at the same time.