East Titchberry Farmhouse Including Wall Immediately To North

East Titchberry Farmhouse including wall immediately to north

A farmhouse dating to around 1500 with 17th- and 18th-century alterations and 20th-century additions. The building is constructed of rendered rubble walls beneath a gable-ended thatch roof.

The farmhouse has two rendered brick stacks—one axial and one at the left gable-end—and a rendered rubble stack with dripcourse and brick shaft at the right gable.

The original plan form is not entirely clear, but the house currently contains three main rooms, presumably originally separated by a passage of which no trace now remains. The house was originally constructed in the open hall form with a central hearth, though the extent to which it was open to the roof is uncertain because the roof structure over each end has been replaced. The hall was floored at some stage during the 17th century, and an axial stack was inserted into it. A stack was also added to the right-hand room in the 17th century, though the stack serving the left-hand room may be a later insertion. Behind the right-hand room sits a 17th-century newel staircase contained in a projection.

Further alterations occurred around the early 18th century, when the house may have been turned back to front. The front wall of the hall was built out and an axial passage was partitioned off along its rear wall. Another staircase was added in a projection behind the left-hand room, probably in the late 18th or early 19th century. Two single-storey 20th-century extensions have been built at the front of either end.

The exterior is two storeys. The asymmetrical northern elevation has 20th-century small-paned casements and sashes with a wide projection at the centre. Single-storey flat-roofed 20th-century extensions project from the left and right ends. The southern elevation features an asymmetrical arrangement of windows. The right-hand side of the front projects slightly and is without windows; to the left of centre is a semi-circular stair projection. The first floor has 20th-century small-paned one- and two-light casements. Below these, to the left, is a 19th-century 16-pane sash, and at the centre are paired 16-pane sashes. The stair projection between them has a 20th-century stable-type door on its left-hand side and a single-light casement on the front. The right-hand projection has a 20th-century plank and part-glazed door to its left. A stone mounting block stands against the east gable wall. To the north of the house, a small courtyard is enclosed by a tall stone rubble wall with shaped coping, which may be 17th century in origin.

Internally, the right-hand room contains an open fireplace with a 17th-century chamfered and hollow step-stopped wooden lintel and a cloam oven on its left-hand side. Stone newel stairs at the rear are unusually contained within a light-framed partition, with the outer stone wall enclosing them at some distance outward. The central room shows evidence of early 18th-century remodelling through its chair rail and moulded wooden cornice, and a contemporary chimneypiece featuring a projecting central panel to the frieze and dentilled cornice breaking forward above it. Between the chimneypiece and cornice are two fielded panels of a type that almost certainly would have lined the whole room. The cupboards either side are probably 19th century.

The roof structure contains two original cruck trusses over the hall, of which the rear blades and only half the front ones survive; one is a face-pegged jointed cruck. The morticed cranked collars survive complete with original rafters, battens and thatch, all smoke-blackened. At the front of the roof, where the wall has been built out, new rafters have been inserted to take the shallower roof pitch. Over the left-hand and right-hand ends the roof has been replaced—probably in the 18th century over the left end, though over the right end the structure could be 17th century, though full inspection was not possible.