Stockhay

Stockhay is a house, originally a small 17th and 18th century farmhouse and linhay, with modernisations dating to around 1970. The building is constructed of plastered cob and stone rubble, with a stone rubble stack topped with 20th century brick and a thatched roof.

The original 17th-century farmhouse comprised only the two left-hand (south-eastern) rooms, the larger of which remains the main room and contains an original winder stair alongside a gable-end stack. The second room, now a study, was originally a dairy or pantry. The right-hand two rooms have been converted from agricultural buildings, with the smaller inner room serving as a kitchen and entrance hall, formerly a pigsty, and the larger room a two-bay linhay. The house is two storeys throughout.

The exterior has an irregular five-window front with 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars. A 20th-century, weatherboarded oriel projection sits above the former linhay, incorporating the original tallet or hayloft. The front door, centrally placed under a contemporary gabled porch, is itself a 20th-century addition. A feeding hatch from the former pigsty remains, incorporating an oak frame with reused pieces of moulded 17th-century origin. The original entrance was into the left-hand room, now blocked by a window. The roof is gable-ended on the left and hipped on the right, extending over a woodshed. At the rear, the original farmhouse section has a possibly original oak-mullioned three-light window with rectangular panes of old leaded glass.

The interior of the original farmhouse is well-preserved. The main room features roughly-chamfered cross beams. The rubble fireplace has a soffit-chamfered and scroll-stopped oak lintel and an oven relined in the 19th century. An original oak stair leads to the upper floor and the roof structure comprises A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars. The 19th-century linhay was originally open-fronted, and its supporting structure is visible internally, including a crossbeam tenoned into a full-height oak post supporting a 19th-century king post truss. The building represents a survival of a small 17th-century house and is generally well-preserved.