Waterhouse Farmhouse

Waterhouse Farmhouse

This is a farmhouse dating from around 1500, with alterations and additions from the 16th, 17th and 20th centuries. The building has rendered cob walls and a gable-ended thatch roof. At the left-hand end is a brick stack, while the right-hand end has a rendered brick shaft. An axial stone rubble stack with dripcourse and moulded cap rises through the centre.

The house follows a three-room and through-passage plan. The original form of the lower room to the right is unclear, as it was used for agricultural purposes before conversion, though it may have been rebuilt. The hall and lower end were originally open to the roof with a central hearth serving the hall. A solid full-height wall separates the hall from the inner room. The inner room shows no roof access, making it impossible to determine whether it was added later or built as a two-storey range from the outset. Early staircase evidence at the rear of the inner room could support either theory.

Around the mid-16th century, a chamber was built over the passage (and possibly the lower end), jetted into the still-open hall. The hall was finally floored and its stack inserted, backing onto the passage, in the late 16th or early 17th century. Possibly around this time or slightly later, a wing was added behind the hall. This wing is unheated and until recently served as an outbuilding, suggesting its original purpose remains unclear. In the 20th century, the lower end was considerably altered and converted from an outbuilding.

The exterior shows two storeys with an asymmetrical five-window front of late 20th-century one, two and three-light casements. A 20th-century part-glazed door opens to the former passage at right of centre, and a 20th-century lean-to stands against the left-hand end. A rear wing projects to the right of centre.

Inside, the hall contains a fireplace with a roughly chamfered wooden lintel and granite jamb to the left, and an oven on the right-hand side. The central axial beam is roll-moulded, while the half-beams at front and rear are only chamfered. The ceiling level changes in a line parallel with the hall stack, marking the position of the internal jetty. The inner room has a smaller fireplace with chamfered wooden lintel and rough granite jambs. On the rear wall is a blocked doorway to former newel stairs (now gone), with a chamfered wooden door frame featuring an arched head, now partly rebuilt.

The roof contains one original true cruck over the hall, which is chamfered and neatly stopped halfway down. It has a morticed cranked collar, threaded purlins and morticed apex with diagonal ridge. The timbers are completely smoke-blackened, including the common rafters and underside of thatch. The purlins continue, smoke-blackened, beyond the inserted stack over the passage and lower end, though the thatch has been replaced. Parallel to the stack are the remains of a timber partition, blackened on the hall side and rising above the internal jetty. Over the rear wing, one original truss survives, consisting of substantial, apparently straight principals with a very high morticed collar and a later collar lapped across the principals below it. This is visible from the first floor, and there is no loft access above.

The particular interest of this house lies in the survival of features from each of its main phases, clearly demonstrating the process of modernisation of a medieval house that can often only be inferred or deduced from other examples.