Heckwood Farmhouse

Heckwood Farmhouse, now a house, is an early 17th-century farmhouse with significant alterations and additions dating from the mid-17th century onwards. The main structure is built of granite rubble with granite dressings, featuring a rendered cross wing. The roof is slate and asbestos slate with ridge and stepped stacks.

The building originally followed a three-room and through-passage plan, with a hall and inner room to the left, a shippon to the right, and a front porch. The hall was heated by an axial stack backing onto the passage, with an original stair positioned to the rear right of the hall, later removed in the 20th century. In the mid-17th century, the inner room was replaced by a two-storey, single-room cross wing with its own interior stack and an external stair tower. A dairy outshut was added to the rear of the hall, with later 19th-century additions enclosing the rear passage door. The shippon roof was raised, probably in the early 18th century, and extensively altered in the late 20th century for residential use.

The external appearance shows a two-storey elevation with 20th-century PVC casement windows set in original apertures. The front porch has a pitched roof with surviving roll-moulded jambs to the outer opening and an inner granite doorway with a four-centred, roll-moulded arch and a ledged door with strap hinges. A small casement sits under the eaves above the porch. The shippon to the right has its roof raised to the hall ridge height, with windows at ground and first floors and French windows to the right, along with two surviving ventilation slits. The cross wing features a half-glazed inner door and casements across its front elevations. A stair tower to the cross wing has a single light with a slate dripstone. A granite water trough is attached to the right gable end of the shippon.

Inside, the passage is floored with slate and contains two chamfered axial beams. A granite step leads down to the shippon, which retains two trusses at its upper end with principal rafters, side-pegged cambered collars, and halved-and-pegged principals; the overall roof spans six bays but most trusses are 20th-century replacements. A two-centred, arched, hollow-chamfered granite doorway with pyramid stops opens from the passage into the hall, which features a fireplace with a chamfered timber lintel and rebuilt rubble jambs. Seven chamfered cross beams span the hall, with an additional beam inserted at the site of the removed stair. The hall is flanked by 19th-century moulded doorframes leading to the rear dairy outshut and cross wing. The cross wing's inner room contains a fireplace with a chamfered timber lintel and chamfered granite monolith jambs, and a stone newel stair in the tower. The first floor in the cross wing has a fireplace with a 19th-century cast iron grate; the room over the hall was partitioned into two rooms in the 20th century by a flue, with the wall chamfered at the site of the original stair. A two-bay roof over the hall shows straight principals visible in the first floor room. The porch appears to have been rebuilt, with the outer doorway lintel missing.