Thornbury Farmhouse Including Forecourt Walls Adjoining To South

This is a farmhouse dating from the mid-16th century, possibly with earlier origins, and significantly altered in the later 16th and 17th centuries, with minor modernisations since. The construction is primarily cob with stone rubble footings, roughcast externally. Granite and cob stacks are topped with 19th and 20th-century brick, and the roof is thatched to the main block, with corrugated iron and slate to the kitchen and outshots.

Originally a 3-room-and-through-passage plan house built across a hillslope, it features a service end parlour at the west end with a gable-end stack. The hall has an axial stack backing onto the passage, and a large inner room with an end stack. A 17th-century kitchen block projects forward at a right angle to the right end, overlapping a short distance, with a front-end stack and a woodshed outshot to the front. A late 19th-century pump house is situated in the angle of the two wings, and there is likely a secondary dairy outshot to the rear. The original house was an open hall house. By the mid-17th century, all rooms were floored and had fireplaces, and the rear of the passage was blocked by a new staircase.

The front of the farmhouse has a nearly symmetrical 3-window facade with 20th-century casement windows arranged around a front passage doorway containing a late 19th- to early 20th-century part-glazed door. The roof is gable-ended to the left and half-hipped to the right, with a hipped roof to the kitchen.

The interior retains some original features despite 19th and 20th-century modernisation. In the main block, original fireplaces are blocked by 20th-century grates, and much of the carpentry is hidden by plaster. The service end parlour contains an 18th-century cupboard with fielded panel doors and H-hinges. The granite ashlar back of the hall fireplace is visible in the passage. The hall features a 17th-century soffit-chamfered crossbeam with run-out stops, and the large inner room (now the kitchen) has plastered crossbeams. There are two large side-pegged jointed cruck trusses exposed in the main block, with others possibly boxed into the crosswalls. The kitchen wing fireplace is partly blocked, revealing part of a soffit-chamfered oak lintel; the roof has an A-frame truss with pegged lap-jointed collar. The pump house contains a large granite trough.

The forecourt is enclosed by a low granite stone rubble wall with rounded coping, including a central gateway accessed by granite steps.