Olditch Farmhouse

Olditch Farmhouse

House, former farmhouse. Built in the early-to-mid 16th century with major improvements during the late 16th and 17th centuries, refurbished and rearranged in the late 19th century, and modernised with extensions around 1970.

The building has plastered walls of granite stone rubble, with cob in places. Stone rubble chimneys with granite ashlar chimneypieces, two of them. The roof is slate; the original house was thatched. The short crosswing now faces the road to the north-east, but the original main block is at right-angles to the rear of the left end, facing north-west and built down a gentle slope. The house is L-shaped and two storeys.

The original plan was a 4-room-and-through-passage layout. At the right end is a small inner room with a gable-end stack. The hall, also relatively small, has a large axial stack backing onto the passage. The parlour on the lower side of the passage has a large axial stack also backing onto the passage. A small unheated lobby or dairy once stood at the left end but has since been removed to enlarge the parlour.

The original early-to-mid 16th-century house was a part-floored open hall house with a full-height framed crosswall at the upper end of the hall. The inner room had a chamber over from the beginning. The hall was originally open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. In the late 16th century a hall fireplace was inserted. The service end was rebuilt in the mid-to-late 17th century as a dairy and parlour with a new stack, and the hall was probably floored over around the same time, thereafter serving as a kitchen.

A late 19th-century single-room extension was added at right angles in front of the lower end, with a gable-end stack. Around 1970 the whole house was modernised and a kitchen extension built in the angle of the two wings, extending across the former passage front doorway. The inner room stack may date to this period.

The exterior includes a gable end of the main block containing a late 19th-century casement with glazing bars over a 20th-century lean-to porch, which continues round the left corner as a conservatory. The late 19th-century extension has 4-pane sashes of that date on each floor. All roofs are gable-ended. Other sides feature a variety of late 19th and 20th-century casements with glazing bars.

Interior features include axial ceiling joists of large scantling in the inner room, now with a 20th-century fireplace. The hall contains a massive granite ashlar fireplace hooded on large granite corbels with a hollow-chamfered surround, including an oven with a 19th-century cast iron door. No beam is exposed here. The crosswall between the hall and inner room is exposed in the roof space—a closed truss filled with wattle-and-daub, sooted on the hall side only. The hall roof is carried on a true cruck truss, smoke-blackened from the open hearth fire. The rest of the roof was replaced in the late 19th century.

The parlour has a granite ashlar fireplace with an oak lintel shaped to make a segmental arch, soffit-chamfered with scroll stops. The crossbeam is soffit-chamfered with ramshead scroll stops. A new crossbeam has been inserted along the line of the removed dairy partition. The joists in both dairy and parlour have shallow scratch mouldings.