The Lake Farm, Pendock

The Lake Farm, Pendock

The Lake Farm comprises an agricultural worker's cottage with associated farm buildings. The cottage is thought to date from the early eighteenth century, though it has undergone later modifications and additions.

The main house is timber-framed with brick infill panels. The south elevation has been rendered with roughcast, while the pitched roof is covered with clay tiles. An external brick chimney stack with tiled offsets rises from the west elevation. An eastern extension, dating from the mid-twentieth century, is constructed of brick with a tiled roof and replaces an earlier structure that historically projected to the north.

The footprint is rectangular, oriented on a west-east axis. Internally, the house follows a simple two-room plan on each of its two storeys, with the principal entrance opening directly into the western ground-floor room. A stair rises in the north-eastern part of the building to connect the two levels.

The south-facing entrance elevation contains a planked door set within a timber surround, positioned slightly towards the west of centre—not its original location. The fenestration is irregular: two ground-floor window openings differ slightly in size, with smaller horizontal windows above on the first floor. A further narrow window sits immediately east of the door. The openings may retain their original positions but have been modified and probably enlarged; they now have twentieth-century tiled cills and timber lintels with twentieth-century timber frames. The north elevation displays exposed square timber framing infilled with whitewashed brick panels. A small metal-framed window has been inserted beneath the eaves towards the centre, lighting the western first-floor room. A lightweight lean-to with corrugated iron roof rests against the lower part of the building to the north. A twentieth-century brick lean-to kitchen extension stands against the east wall, sloping from eaves level with its entrance to the north. Above this, the timber framing of the gable remains visible. The west elevation is dominated by a broad external stack that widens towards ground level, with its uppermost part rebuilt. A small early-twentieth-century lean-to extends from the north-west corner to house an unplumbed lavatory.

Interior

The ground floor opens from the south entrance directly into the sitting room, which contains one lateral beam, chamfered and stopped at both ends; the beam has been cut at its south end to accommodate the door. The fireplace in the west wall is a mid-twentieth-century replacement. A raised doorway leads into the eastern room, which has a single axial beam, also chamfered and stopped. The north section of this eastern room is partitioned to enclose the stair, accessed by a door with a low cupboard to the west; another cupboard stands to the east within the stair enclosure. The stair rises westwards and curves southwards, arriving at the centre of the first floor.

The upper storey has wide timber floorboards. The eastern room is irregularly shaped due to stair partitioning. The western room is accessed by a very low door; its fireplace has been blocked. The ceilings of both upper rooms follow the roof line, enclosing the structure, with no access to the apex. The kitchen extension is accessed internally through a doorway in the eastern ground-floor room—the opening and door predate the current extension. Within the kitchen, the timber framing of the external eastern wall remains visible, though painted. All planked doors within the house date from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.

Agricultural Buildings

To the north of the cottage stand agricultural buildings forming the west and north sides of a small yard; buildings appear to have occupied these positions by 1831.

A timber-framed barn, thought to date from the eighteenth century, stretches along the west side of the yard on a north-south alignment. The pitched roof structure is complete, consisting of king-post trusses with ridge beam, purlins and rafters; the third, northernmost truss is queen-post. The timber is pit-sawn and the structure is pegged. The wall framing is substantially intact, with pit-sawn vertical posts fixed to a head plate and cill beam; the brick plinth has partially collapsed. Twentieth-century metal doors occupy an original wide opening at the south end of the west wall. The walls are clad with twentieth-century timber, except for areas of earlier cladding on the east wall—which has a planked door and window with shutter—and on the south wall. The roof is now covered with corrugated metal.

The cider house stands against the south wall of the barn. Smaller and later than the barn, it is also timber-framed on a brick plinth (partly replaced with breeze-block) with a pitched roof. The framing is probably early nineteenth-century with some renewal, but the roof structure is twentieth-century and the walls are covered with twentieth-century cladding. A door opens in the west wall. Inside stands a stone cider press with its runner stone and pole, appearing to be of red Herefordshire sandstone conglomerate and possibly originating in that county.

To the north of the yard stand a nineteenth-century stone-built barn and attached animal shelter.