Flavills Farmhouse

Flavills Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the early to mid 17th century, with probable origins in the 16th century, and extensively refurbished with a new kitchen wing in the mid to late 19th century. The house is constructed from plastered stone rubble and cob, with stone rubble and brick stacks, topped with 19th and 20th century brick. The roof is slate, formerly thatched.

The main block is arranged with a five-room-and-through-passage plan, facing north. A late 19th-century two-storey lean-to addition serves as a washhouse and bakehouse, with an axial stack backing onto the main house and servant accommodation above, leaning against a lower, unheated dairy. A two-storey porch stands in front of the passage, and the hall has a large, projecting lateral front stack. To the right is a parlour with its own axial stack backing onto a straight flight stair, which separates the parlour from the west end room, featuring a gable-end stack. A single-room kitchen block, with a gable-end stack, projects at right angles to the rear of the dairy and overlaps the rear end of the passage.

Due to a lack of exposed early structural carpentry, the precise development of the house cannot be determined. The kitchen block, washhouse/bakehouse, and west end room are 19th-century additions. Originally, the house comprised the three-room-and-through-passage section of the main block, suggesting 16th-century origins as an open hall house. The porch is likely 17th-century.

The exterior presents an irregular 2:1:3 window front with 19th and 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars. The passage front doorway is located to the left of centre and features a plank door with an applied four-panel front, dating to the 18th or 19th century. The porch has a gabled form with a segmental outer arch and a row of pigeon holes under the eaves. The main roof is gable-ended.

The interior is largely the result of 19th and 20th-century modernization, with blocked fireplaces and no visible structural carpentry. The only surviving feature of earlier date is the doorframe from the passage to the dairy, which has an ovolo-moulded surround. The roofspace was not inspected, but the roof structure is thought to be 19th century, evidenced by the truss principal bases visible below the first-floor ceiling, following the low pitch of the slate roof. Flavills Farmhouse is part of a group of attractive listed buildings within the hamlet of Kingscott.