Netherton House

Netherton House is a house dating from the mid-16th century, with substantial rebuilding and rearrangement in the early 19th century. The older part is constructed with plastered cob on a stone rubble footing, while the remainder is plastered stone rubble; stone rubble stacks are topped with plastered brick, and the roof is thatched. The house is built down a gentle hillside, facing south-east, and originally comprised a three-room main block. The downhill room to the right served as the kitchen, featuring a large end stack. The central room has an axial stack backing onto the kitchen, and the left, uphill end room has a projecting gable-end stack. A single-room, unheated wing projects at right angles in front of the kitchen. This represents the house as it was rebuilt in the early 19th century. Beneath the visible structure lies the earlier fabric of a 16th-century, three-room-and-through-passage house; the kitchen is under a lower roof and the front wing is from the 17th century. The house is two storeys in height, while the front wing is three storeys.

The front façade retains a 3:1 window arrangement with 19th-century replacement windows containing glazing bars, the upper windows with elliptical heads. The main block has a gable-ended roof that steps down to the earlier, narrower roof over the right end, while the front wing is also gable-ended. A 19th-century rear door to the left end incorporates an original panelled door. A secondary rear entrance to the kitchen is sheltered by a gabled, slate-roofed porch.

Internally, only the lower right end retains early features. A large mid-17th-century kitchen fireplace contains two bread ovens, and has an oak lintel with ovolo-moulded, chamfer step stops incised with simple decoration. The axial beam is soffit-chamfered with scroll stops, as is the beam in the front room. The 2-bay roofs in the kitchen and front room are both mid-17th century. The lower parts of the trusses are concealed, but feature pegged lap-jointed collars with dovetail halvings. A 16th-century roof truss exists between the kitchen and the central room, believed to be a cruck truss. The lower parts are boxed into a partition and exhibit smoke-blackening from an original open hearth fire, with a cambered collar. The remainder of the house contains 19th-century joinery and detailing, including an open string staircase with stick balusters, turned newel posts, a mahogany handrail, and a curtail step.