Lower Bransgrove

Lower Bransgrove is a farmhouse, probably dating to the 14th century, with extensions built in the late 14th or early 15th century. It was remodelled in the 16th and/or 17th centuries, with further alterations made in the 18th and 19th centuries. The walls are rendered cob built on a stone rubble plinth, with a hipped thatched roof. The chimneys are constructed of stone rubble with axial and rear lateral stacks, heightened in brick.

The building follows a long 5-room-and-through-passage plan, with the low end positioned to the right (east). The original 14th-century house occupied the hall and parlour of the existing structure, and possibly part of the low end. In the late 14th or 15th century, a short 2-storey cross-wing was added at the high left-hand end. The axial stack backing onto the passage may have been inserted into the hall before it was floored in the late 16th or 17th century. The low right-hand end with its rear lateral stack could originally have been unheated. The 18th and 19th centuries saw the insertion of a pantry or dairy and stairs at the low end, an axial passage behind the parlour leading to stairs at the back of the cross-wing, and an outshut behind the hall and parlour.

The exterior is 2 storeys with a long asymmetrical 5-window range. Late 19th or 20th-century 2- and 3-light casements with glazing bars are fitted throughout, with plank doors positioned to the right of centre and at the left and right. A rectangular oven projection projects from the left of the centre doorway. The rear elevation features a single-storey rubble outshut on the right with a corrugated asbestos roof, a large lateral stack on the left, and a blocked window slit in a wooden frame.

Inside, the large hall fireplace has a high timber lintel with thin chamfer on splayed stone rubble jambs and a clay oven. The axial hall beam is chamfered with its tops trimmed off, and chamfered half-beams survive at front and back. Similar half-beams and mutilated axial beams are found in the parlour. The kitchen contains chamfered waney cross-beams and a large fireplace with a cambered brick arch and brick oven. The room beneath the cross-wing chamber has an unchamfered axial beam. Most interior joinery is 19th century, including plank and panelled doors, chimneypieces, staircases and a dog-gate.

The roof contains two 14th-century trusses of the original house at either end of the hall. These are smoke-blackened full crucks with square-section blades connected at the apex by short yokes to carry a missing square-set ridgepiece. Large cranked collars feature carved bosses of whorl and petal motifs. The purlins and common rafters have been replaced. Above the putative cross-wing is one blade of a raised cruck with similar short yokes at the apex, clean and featuring a chamfered arched brace and mortices for missing wind-braces and tenoned purlins. Three 17th-century trusses span the low end, with straight principals connected by halved dovetail lap-jointed collars, two of which are missing.