Bourna Farmhouse

Bourna Farmhouse is an early 16th-century farmhouse with 17th-century alterations and an addition. It features rendered cob and rubble walls and a thatched roof that is hipped at the left end and gabled at the right. The building has an axial rendered stack, likely made of rubble, and a brick stack, with a similar stack at the right gable end. The original plan consisted of a three-room-and-through-passage layout, with the lower end on the left heated by an end stack, and the inner room also heated. The hall stack backs onto the passage. Initially, the hall was open to the roof with a central hearth, while the lower and inner rooms may have always been floored. The hall was floored and a stack was inserted around the early 17th century. A stable was likely added at the end of the lower room during the 17th century, and outshuts were constructed along the rear wall in the later 19th century.

The exterior is two storeys high with a long, asymmetrical front featuring four windows of early to mid-20th-century two- and three-light casements, with the two-light windows being small-paned. There is a 19th-century panelled and glazed door to the passage located left of centre, which is sheltered by a doorhood. The interior has plastered beams on the ground floor, concealing early fireplace openings. The original roof remains over the hall, but the roof space above the lower and inner rooms is not accessible and is separated from the hall by full-height solid walls. The wall at the lower end of the hall is smoke-blackened, and this blackening extends up to the hall truss, which features a threaded ridge and morticed apex. Above the hall truss, the soffit of the roof has been plastered up to the inner room wall, possibly during the 17th century when the hall was floored and its stack was inserted against the truss, creating a chamber above. This farmhouse retains a traditional exterior, and it is likely that more internal features survive, although they are concealed by later modernisation.