South Reed Farmhouse

South Reed Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the late 15th century with 17th-century alterations and additions. The walls are rendered cob and stone rubble, and the building is topped with a gable-ended corrugated iron roof. There is an axial granite ashlar stack with dripstones, and a 19th-century rebuilt rubble and brick stack at the gable end of the wing.

The building originally followed either a 2- or 3-room and through passage or longhouse plan. The demolition of the room below the passage makes exact interpretation difficult, but the siting of the original house down a slope and the rebuilding of the lower end as an outbuilding suggest it was originally a longhouse. The hall at least was originally open to the roof with a central hearth. A solid wall divides the hall and inner room, and there may originally have been no room beyond the hall, though the re-roofing of the inner room in line with the cross wing prevents direct evidence of this and might suggest the inner room is integral with the wing. The inner room appears always to have been unheated. In the 17th century, the hall stack was added and the hall ceiled. A wing was added at the front of the inner room around the mid-17th century to serve as a parlour, heated by a gable end fireplace with a similarly heated chamber above. At this stage the hall was probably relegated to kitchen status. The lower end was demolished probably in the 19th century if its rebuilding as outbuildings was contemporary.

The house is 2 storeys with an asymmetrical 2-window front and a substantial wing projecting from the right-hand end, with a lower outbuilding extension at the left-hand end. The windows include early 20th-century casements, with small openings of 1-light to the left and 2-lights to the right on the first floor. The ground floor has a 2-light 19th-century small-paned casement to the left and an early 20th-century lean-to porch in the angle with the wing to its right, which has a 20th-century glazed door. On the inner face of the wing is a 2-light early 20th-century small-paned casement on the ground floor to the right and a similar first floor window at the gable end.

The interior features a 2-bay roof over the hall with 1 pair of curving trusses whose feet are not visible, with a morticed chamfered arch-braced collar and threaded purlins. There is 1 tier of chamfered windbraces, all smoke-blackened. The hall has 3 cross-beams, chamfered with ogee stops and unusual carved crosses before the stops. The original fireplace opening is preserved but has a replacement wooden lintel, with an oven in its left-hand side. Leading from the passage to the hall is a chamfered wooden doorframe with a cranked head which may pre-date the hall stack. The passage has 2 chamfered cross-beams with indiscernible stops. The parlour has 3 chamfered cross-beams with hollow step stops. Its fireplace has a chamfered wooden lintel with diagonal stops and rough granite jambs. The room above the parlour has a similar smaller fireplace with roughly chamfered granite jambs, divided from the chamber over the inner room by a timber-framed partition.

This house preserves a section of good quality medieval roof and shows interesting development in the 17th century with the addition of a parlour wing.