Little Wolleigh Including The Barn About 50 Metres East Of House

This is a house, likely a former farmhouse, dating probably to the 16th or 17th century, with later additions, including a southwest wing added in 1935. The construction is of cob and stone, now rendered with roughcast, and the roof is thatched, with a stack in each gable. A large projecting stack with offsets and an added shaft sits at the northeast end, and there are paired rendered brick stacks on the southwest. The original layout seems to have been a two-room and cross-passage plan, although the main entrance has been moved to the lower end. An additional room was built next to the road on the northeast side, and a further range of rooms were added on the northwest side, facing Ashwell Lane. The front facing southeast has two storeys and four windows; the ground floor has five windows, with a modern doorway in the fourth bay from the right. The windows are late 19th or early 20th century wood casements with transom lights, with two panes in the lower sections. A 16th-century granite surround, brought in from elsewhere, projects in front of the doorway, featuring a rounded arch with sunk spandrels and deeply cut ogee mouldings with a hollow between them. Inside, the two original ground-floor rooms have chamfered ceiling-beams; those in the right-hand room have thickened, corbel-like ends. The left-hand room features a plank-and-muntin screen head-beam, suggesting a former cross-passage along the right-hand side. The southwest gable contains a wide fireplace with a 20th-century lintel and a large brick oven to the left, with a stone opening having a curved top. The right-hand room has re-used late 16th or early 17th century oak panelling. The added room to the right has a wide fireplace, now blocked with a plain wood lintel, and the hearthstone includes a piece of carved stone with a simple zig-zag pattern on the chamfer, also brought from elsewhere. The upper storey was not inspected but is said to have been heightened and re-roofed in the 19th century or later. Nearby, a former barn fronts the A382 and is principally of cob on a stone plinth, seemingly rebuilt in stone at the northwest end, with a low corrugated iron roof. This end has a projecting chimneystack, the top of which has been removed, and it appears there was a heated room with an upper floor adjacent to the barn end. The upper floor has a chamfered beam end and some heavy, probably re-used joists. The lintel over the barn doorway is composed of a piece of the head-beam of a plank-and-muntin screen and a piece of old principal rafter. Another lintel of a barn door consists of part of a chamfered beam with a scroll-stop and two notches. The barn roof was rebuilt in the late 19th or 20th century. A late 16th or early 17th century granite jamb of a doorway or fireplace, ovolo-moulded with a vase stop, lies loose in the garden.