Westworthy Farmhouse

Westworthy Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from around the early 16th century, with alterations and an addition from the 17th century. It is constructed of rendered cob walls, with a gable ended roof covered in slate and asbestos slate. The property features one axial brick stack and two projecting stacks built with rendered rubble, offsets, and brick shafts – one at the front of a wing, and one at the left end of the main range. The original plan comprised three rooms with a through passage, the lower end being to the right. Initially, the house featured an open hall with a central hearth, which was ceiled around the early 17th century, with an axial stack added alongside the passage. Later in the 17th century, a two-room wing was added to the front of the inner room, and this room was heated. The original form of the lower end is unclear; currently, it functions as a shippon (a former animal shelter) with no direct access to the main house, though it contains a well-finished chamfered beam, which suggests it may have previously been a domestic room or that the end has changed in status.

The exterior is asymmetrical, presenting a two-window front with a wing projecting from the left-hand end. The windows are mostly early 20th-century wooden casements, with two and three panes to each light. A window on the first floor to the right-hand side dates to the 19th century and features leaded lights. The wing has two 20th-century casements on the ground floor of the inner face, and one above. A late 19th or early 20th-century lean-to structure sits in the angle of the main range and wing. A 19th-century plank door gives access to the passage, and a shippon is located to the right, with a lower roof line.

Inside, the hall has a cross beam connected to a lower wall beam, both of which are chamfered with hollow step stops. The inner room contains closely spaced, lightly-chamfered beams. Visible roof elements include a smoke-blackened hall truss, with a morticed cranked collar and exposed side-pegged jointed cruck framing on the first floor. An additional early truss may survive at the higher end, although the roof was raised and renewed in the 18th or 19th century.