Lockhouse

This is a house with origins in the late medieval period, significantly altered in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The exterior is whitewashed cob on stone rubble footings, topped with a water reed thatched roof, half-hipped at each end, and featuring two axial stacks. The house originally developed from an open hall, remodelled around the late 16th/early 17th century, likely into a three-room and through-passage layout with a hall stack backing onto the passage, a rear stair turret to the hall, and a lower-end room that may have been unheated. An inner room once existed but has since disappeared. A small room attached to the lower end was probably a later outbuilding integrated into the house; it is now heated from the right-hand axial stack.

The house has two heated rooms on either side of a blocked-off through passage, with a small room at the lower end. The front has an irregular five-window arrangement. The eaves of the thatch form an eyebrow over the left-hand window and rise as a gabled dormer over the right-hand first-floor window. The present front entrance is on the right, with a plank and cover strip door under a slated canopy supported by brackets. A projecting oven is located on the front to the left of the axial stack, and a window replaces the former front door to the through passage. Windows are mostly 20th-century, 2-light casements with 2 panes per light, with a 3-light casement on the ground floor left. The rear elevation features an attractive rounded stair turret with a separately thatched half-hipped roof and a 17th-century 2-light chamfered timber mullioned stair window. The left-hand end wall's appearance suggests the building once extended further to the left.

Inside, notable original features remain. The hall, on the left end, includes one granite monolith and one stone rubble jamb, along with a chamfered lintel above the doorway. A chamfered cross beam is present, featuring stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops. A chamfered stopped doorway leads to the stair turret. The lower end room has a smaller fireplace and a chamfered stopped cross beam. Original 17th-century 2-plank doors are still in place. Upstairs, a chamfered stopped doorframe leads into the chamber above the lower end. Smoke-blackened rafters and battens are visible over the lower end room, and while the main lower end truss has been replaced, a surviving smoke-blackened jointed cruck with a straight collar remains over the hall. This is a well-preserved cob and thatch house with late medieval origins, notable for its fine stair turret and some surviving 17th-century joinery.