Beacon Down

Beacon Down is a small 18th-century house. The garage and other outbuildings are not included in the listing.

The house is constructed of cob, rendered and limewashed, with a thatched roof and corrugated metal to a rear extension. There is one brick chimney stack and one rendered stack. The interior is organised around a two-room plan with a central passage, running east to west, and a small lean-to extension to the east.

The house is two storeys high and has three bays, the bay to the left being considerably wider than the other two. The elevations are limewashed cob under a thatched roof, with gable end stacks. Windows are later 19th or early 20th-century timber casements with multiple panes. The front elevation, facing the road, has a shallow, gabled open porch with a slate roof covering the central, narrow entrance bay. The door is a 19th or early 20th-century half-glazed panelled door. The symmetrical front has two windows to the ground and first floors. A large, high buttress was added to the western gable end in the early 21st century. The rear elevation has less regular window placement, with the first-floor windows offset. A long, narrow lean-to is attached to the right side, with its roof divided into two pitches, designed to avoid obstructing the first-floor window. This extension features one window matching the style of the rest of the house, along with a modern window and door on its south side.

The ground-floor rooms have exposed beams and joists. The living room beam is chamfered with run-out stops. This room retains a large inglenook fireplace built from irregular rubble stone, featuring a 19th-century bread oven (without a door), now housing a wood-burning stove. A steep staircase rises to the right of the fireplace, turning 90 degrees, and leads to a modern utility room and bathroom incorporated into the lean-to. The other ground-floor room is now used as a kitchen; the former fireplace has been closed and replaced with a heat-storage stove. Two bedrooms and a bathroom are on the first floor. The rooms have deep, slightly splayed window openings. The roof structure consists of pegged, rustic A-frame trusses with some queen struts. The thatch is supported by many historic battens.