Higher Eggbear Farmhouse

Higher Eggbear Farmhouse is a farmhouse that dates back to the 16th century, with improvements and extensions made in the 17th century and modernisations in the 20th century. The building features plastered cob on rubble footings, stone stacks with exposed granite ashlar or brick chimney shafts, and a thatched roof. It originally had a three-room-and-through-passage layout with an inner room to the east, and it now stands two storeys high, facing south.

The farmhouse has an axial hall stack that backs onto the passage and end stacks. A two-storey front porch from the 17th century has been incorporated into a 20th-century conservatory. There is also a small two-storey, gable-ended block at the rear of the hall, likely a former stair turret, along with 17th-century outshots at the back. The south front has five windows, with a passage door leading to the projecting glass-fronted conservatory. The conservatory has a roof that extends over it, and there is a 17th-century first-floor window made of oak with three lights and chamfered mullions, featuring 19th-century leaded square panes that project through the thatch as a wide segmental-headed dormer. Other windows are 20th-century casements with glazing bars, mostly with two lights, except for the hall which has three lights. Eyebrows are present over three windows to the right of the conservatory, and there are 20th-century doors leading to service and inner rooms.

Inside, the farmhouse has smoke-blackened roof timbers and thatch over the hall and service room, including a side-pegged jointed cruck truss with a cambered collar over the hall, indicating it was an early 16th-century house with an open hearth and low partitions. A contemporary round-headed oak doorframe is located at the rear of the passage. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the inner room was floored and jettied into the hall, a full-height cob partition was built on the lower side of the passage, and the service end was floored. A hall fireplace was inserted, made of granite with a moulded oak lintel, and an oak plank and muntin screen was added. A rear extension was built, connecting to the hall via an oak flat-arched door. In the mid-17th century, the inner room was extended to three bays with a new roof and a granite fireplace featuring an oak lintel chamfered with a bar-roll stop in the end wall, along with a winder stair to the right. Cob outshots include a 17th-century square-headed door from the passage extension to the outshot behind the service room.