The Bakehouse

The Bakehouse is a house dating from around the early 16th century, significantly remodelled around the early to mid 17th century. It is constructed of whitewashed and rendered cob and stone rubble, with a right-end stack and an axial stack, and is topped by a thatched roof with gabled ends.

The original plan comprised three rooms and a through passage, the front door to the passage now blocked, with the lower end to the right. The hall stack originally backed onto the passage, and there was an unheated inner room. The house began as a late medieval open hall, which appears to have been floored in two phases, with the inner room jettied into the hall. A 20th-century lean-to is located at the rear.

The exterior presents an asymmetrical four-window front. The eaves of the thatch project over the first-floor windows. The entrance to the passage has been replaced with a second window from the left. Most windows are timber casements with glazing bars, except for a three-light hall window. The current entrance is a rear doorway leading into the inner room.

Inside, many original features survive. A plank and muntin screen remains at the higher end of the hall. The muntins are chamfered on the hall side with pyramid stops at hall bench level. The hall features a slender moulded jetty beam, and a half beam with a chamfer and scroll stop at the fireplace end. Scratch-moulded axial joists run between the jetty and the half-beam. There are moulded brackets, probably dating from the 17th century, fixed between the half beam and the replaced lintel of the open fireplace, which has one granite and one stone rubble jamb. A thick cross wall separates the lower end room from the passage. The lower end room has a roughly-chamfered axial beam and a likely 18th or 19th-century fireplace; a 20th-century staircase is situated against the rear wall, with the possible original location of the 17th-century stair adjacent to the hall stack. A closed truss is visible in the lower end wall of the hall, showing an exposed section of smoke-blackened wattle and daub, with another closed truss above the jetty. A section of a moulded 17th-century plaster cornice remains in a first-floor room above the inner room.

The roof is of jointed cruck construction and heavily sooted above the hall, with sooted rafters, battens, thatch, and a diagonally-set ridge. The lower end closed truss is sooted on the hall side, and the timbers over the inner room are also smoke-blackened. The roof space over the lower end was not inspected during the 1986 survey.

The Bakehouse is an attractive and evolved house in a prominent location, and it has group value with Pitmans opposite and No 1, Ridgeway.