Wingstone Farmhouse

MANATON SX 78 SW 4/51 Wingstone Farmhouse - GV II

Farmhouse. Mid C19 front block with earlier remains in rear wing. Coursed granite rubble walls with dressed quoins and window arches. Rear wing rendered granite rubble. Granite gable end chimneys with drip-courses. Dry slate roof with gable ends. Front block has one room on either side of central stair-hall with small service rooms at rear forming double depth plan. Wide kitchen wing at rear of left hand end probably retaining fabric from an earlier house. 2 storeys. Symmetrical 3 window south east front with large 2 light casements and French windows either side on the ground floor all with segmental arched openings. Central doorway has plastered surround with ashlar joint-lining, glazed door with flush panels. Verandah along front of house has reeded and chamfered slender timber posts and slate lean-to roof with carved plastered soffit; later roof lights over ground floor windows. Stair window at rear with margin panes. Wide gable ended wing at rear with large projecting end stack. Interior: Front block contains open well staircase with turned newels, stick balusters and moulded mahogany handrail ramped to newels: 1820-30. 6 panel doors survive but somewhat altered by glazing. Main room of rear wing contains large open fireplace with roughly chamfered wooden lintel and granite jambs. Adjoining it is a smaller secondary hearth with wooden lintel at the same height, sharing the monolithic jamb of the main hearth on the right-hand side and with a probably re- used hollow chamfered granite jamb to the left side. This hearth has a separate flue and at the same height as either of its jambs is a wide groove as if to take a thick shelf. There are several possible purposes for this hearth: it may have been for smoking bacon but the suggestion of a shelf makes a cream or slow cooking oven more plausible as either would necessitate a hollowed-out shelf, underneath which a small fire would be lit and the substance slowly heated on top. From 1904-19 the novelist John Galsworthy stayed here and his work during this time include some of the "Forsyte Saga" novels.

Listing NGR: SX7472281088