Thornbury Farmhouse Including Forecourt Walls Adjoining To South

SX 79 SW DREWSTEIGNTON

5/65 Thornbury farmhouse including forecourt walls adjoining to south

II

Farmhouse. Mid C16 (possibly earlier) with major later C16 and C17 improvements and minor modernisations since. Roughcast on cob with stone rubble footings; granite and cob stacks topped with C19 and C20 brick; thatch roof to main block, corrugated iron and slate to kitchen and outshots. Plan and development: originally a 3-room-and-through-passage plan house facing south and built across a hillslope with service end parlour at the left (west) end with a gable-end stack. Hall has an axial stack backing onto the passage. Large inner room with end stack. 14id C17 kitchen block projecting at right angles forward from the right end and overlapping a short distance. It has a front end stack and woodshed outshot on the front. Late C19 pump house in the angle of the 2 wings and probably secondary dairy outshot to rear. The early development of the house is impossible to determine at present since the roofspace is inaccessible. Nevertheless the original house was an open hall house. By the mid C17 all the rooms were floored and had fireplaces. The rear of the passage was blocked by a new staircase. 2 storeys. Exterior: the right end of the front is hidden behind the kitchen and pumphouse but the rest has a balanced, nearly symmetrical 3-window front of C20 casements without glazing bars arranged around the front passage doorway containing ablate C19 - early C20 part-glazed door. Roof is gable-ended to left and half-hipped to right. Kitchen roof is hipped. Interior: is mainly the result of C19 and C20 modernisations but enough early work shows to prove that these were essentially superficial. In the main block all the fireplaces are blocked by C20 grates and much of the carpentry detail is hidden by plaster. The service end parlour contains an C18 cupboard with fielded panel doors and H-hinges. In the passage the granite ashlar back of the hall fireplace shows. The hall has a C17 soffit-chamfered and step-stopped crossbeam. The large inner room (now the kitchen) has plastered crossbeams. The original roof seems to survive but the roofspace is inaccessible. 2 large side-pegged jointed cruck trusses are exposed and others may be boxed into the crosswalls. Most of the main block joinery detail is C19 although there are a couple of C18 2 fielded panel doors. The kitchen wing fireplace is partly blocked and only the centre of its soffit-chamfered oak lintel shows. The crossbeam here is soffit-chamfered with runout stops and the 2- bay roof is carried on an A-frame truss with pegged lap-jointed collar. The pump house contains a large granite trough. The forecourt is enclosed by low granite stone rubble wall with rounded coping and includes a central gateway which is gained by a flight of granite steps.

Listing NGR: SX7015593485