Hendicott Farmhouse

Hendicott Farmhouse

This is a farmhouse of late 15th-century to early 16th-century origin, substantially improved in the later 16th and 17th centuries, then refurbished and rearranged in the mid 19th century. The building is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble chimney stacks topped with brick. The hall stack retains its original stone chimneyshaft. The roof is thatched, though the later section has been replaced with corrugated asbestos.

The original house followed a much-altered three-room-and-through-passage plan, facing south-south-west. The left (western) end was rebuilt and enlarged in the mid 19th century to accommodate new principal rooms comprising two rooms with a front entrance hall and rear stairs. The left end room has a gable-end stack, while the right room (the former inner room) has an axial stack backing onto the main stairs. The former hall was converted to a kitchen at this time, with its fireplace partly rebuilt. The passage and service end room were removed from domestic use, the lower passage partition was removed, and the passage rear doorway was blocked. These spaces now remain unheated.

The original house appears to have been open to the roof from end to end, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. A hall fireplace was probably inserted in the mid 16th century. Around the same time, the passage and service end were floored over, with the hall itself floored in the mid or late 17th century. The house is now two storeys throughout.

The mid 19th-century refurbishment added a new left end with a symmetrical three-window front arranged around the main entrance door, a six-panel door set behind a 20th-century porch. The door is flanked by 16-pane sashes, with a central 12-pane sash above. To the right, the hall bay has a fourth window comprising a 20th-century ground-floor casement with glazing bars and a late 17th-century first-floor oak four-light casement with flat-faced mullions containing rectangular panes of old leaded glass. Two further doorways with 20th-century plank doors lie to the right of this: the first is a mid 19th-century insertion to the former hall, the second is the original passage front doorway. The left end is obscured behind a late 19th-century to early 20th-century agricultural building. The roof is gable-ended to the left and half-hipped to the right.

Internally, the former hall, now kitchen, contains a large and unusually deep fireplace built of granite ashlar, with one side rebuilt in the mid 19th century. It has a roughly-finished oak lintel and the ovens were inserted or relined in the 19th century. The crossbeam here is mid or late 17th century, soffit-chamfered with straight cut stops. The service end room has a roughly soffit-chamfered crossbeam of indeterminate date.

The roof over the former hall, passage, and service end room is original to the building. It is carried on jointed crucks of large scantling held by face-pegs augmented by slip tenons, with curving collars and small triangular yokes of Alcock's apex type L1. The roof also features butt purlins, a service end hip cruck, and windbraces over the bay above the hall. The entire roof structure, including the common rafters but excluding the thatch, is smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The former inner room appears to be a mid 19th-century rebuild associated with the extension, displaying joinery details of that period.