Chapple Farmhouse

Chapple Farmhouse is a former farmhouse dating to the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It is constructed of stone rubble and cob, with whitewashed and rendered areas, and has a slate roof, gabled at the ends and at the end of the rear right wing. The building has a front lateral stack with a tall dressed stone shaft, end stacks to the main range, and an end stack to the rear right wing.

The house originally comprised a three-room and through-passage arrangement, with a lower-end kitchen to the south and a parlour to the north. A rear outshut, potentially integral, contains the staircase and has a catslide roof, accessed from the rear of the passage. A rear right dairy wing with accommodation above is likely from the 18th or 19th century, and a 20th-century rear lean-to has been added to the main range.

The east-facing front has an asymmetrical appearance with a 4-window arrangement. The front door is located to the left of centre, within the through passage. The windows are a mixture of 19th and 20th-century timber sash and casement windows, some with glazing bars.

Inside, slate floors are present in the passage and the left-hand room. This room has an open fireplace with a brick lintel and jambs, and a void adjacent to the stack that may be a former smoking chamber. The left and right partitions of the hall rise to the apex of the roof and are formed by closed trusses. The hall retains chamfered cross beams with bar scroll stops, an open fireplace with a hollow-moulded lintel, stone rubble jambs, and a clay-lined bread oven. A surviving hall bench is supported in brackets, and its back is made from re-used 17th-century panelling. A small closet opens off the rear of the hall, within the outshut; the contemporary staircase now cuts into this closet, which may have originally been a buttery. A probable 16th-century two-light window with splayed internal jambs, consisting of a pair of narrow rectangular unglazed slits set in a single piece of oak, now looks into the dairy, suggesting it was originally an external wall. The dairy retains slate-topped benches.

Two curved foot trusses survive in the hall, associated with framed partitions, one of which was recently exposed and found to have shuttered cob infill. The trusses have lap-dovetailed collars and later timbering above.

Chapple Farmhouse is a complete traditional house, possessing attractive external features and good interior details.