Higher Hurston Farmhouse Including Garden Walls Adjoining To Front

This is a farmhouse, likely originating in the 16th century with a core dating to the 17th century, and significantly refurbished and extended in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is constructed of granite rubble with dressed quoins and granite ashlar dressings, featuring granite stacks with ashlar chimney shafts, and a thatched roof with slate sections on the outshots. The original design was a 3-room-and-through-passage plan, facing south, with the service and main room on the eastern side. The layout has been altered through later refurbishment. The original service room is now a parlour, with a rebuilt stack from the late 19th or early 20th century. The rear of the passage is blocked by a projecting stair and bathroom block. A large axial stack backs onto the passage in the hall. An unheated dairy occupies the inner room, and the kitchen, added probably in the 17th century, has an end stack. This kitchen and the rear of the house are terraced into the hillside. Outshots extend from the rear of the hall and the dairy. The exterior features an irregular 5-window front with late 19th and early 20th century timber mullion-and-transom windows containing leaded glass panes. Ground-floor windows have segmental arches of granite ashlar, while first-floor windows have timber lintels. The front passage doorway, also with a segmental arch, contains a large plank door with cover strips and ornate wrought iron strap hinges, set within a contemporary stone rubble porch with a gabled slate roof and segmental outer arch. A small fixed window and a row of three pigeon holes with a slate, now-headed sundial inscribed ‘T Willing 1851’ are situated to the left of the doorway. A visible join indicates the transition between the inner room and the kitchen extension. The roof is gable-ended on the right and hipped on the left. Internally, features are mainly from the late 19th and early 20th century, although the basic fabric appears to be 17th century. The ground floor rooms have soffit-chamfered crossbeams. The hall fireplace is likely from the late 16th or 17th century, consisting of granite ashlar with a hollow-chamfered granite lintel. Roof trusses exhibit pegged lap-jointed collars with curving feet, likely dating to the late 17th century. The ground floor walls were stripped back to the granite during the late 19th and early 20th century renovations, and most of the joinery detail originates from that period, including stairs with spat balusters and granite steps. The front garden is enclosed by low granite rubble walls shaped to follow the slope.