Longhouse Farmhouse, About 70 Metres South Of Lower Cator Farmhouse

Longhouse Farmhouse, dating back to the 16th century, stands about 70 metres south of Lower Cator Farmhouse. The building was originally an outbuilding of Lower Cator Farm and is now undergoing restoration as a longhouse. It has undergone significant rebuilding in the 18th and 19th centuries. The structure is primarily granite rubble, with a lower gable-wall partially reconstructed in concrete block. The roof is covered with corrugated iron. The house part likely originally comprised two rooms; it now functions as a single large room, with an unheated inner room and a hall containing a chimneystack backing onto a through-passage. A stone rubble wall, rising only through the ground storey, separates the shippon from the passage. Originally two storeys high, much of the upper-floor beams have been removed, and there is a single-storey lean-to at the rear. The front elevation has few windows and appears to have been rebuilt in the early 19th century, likely two windows wide originally. A small, blocked window with a plain granite lintel is at the left-hand end of the ground storey, and above it, under the eaves, is another small window sealed with corrugated iron. On the right-hand side are large, inserted 20th-century barn doors. The shippon end, incorporating the through-passage, is lower and of earlier construction. A door to the passage on the left-hand end has a lintel with well-cut voussoirs, likely a late 17th or early 18th-century alteration. To the right of this door is an inserted doorway with a window above, and just beyond that is an original blocked slit window. The rear wall has no windows. Inside the house part, the remains of the hall fireplace are visible; the lintel is missing, but the stone jambs remain, together with an oven surrounded by a rectangular granite frame. To the right of the oven, the outline of a former circular stair survives in the upper storey. A doorway to the left of the stair has a chamfered wood lintel with run-out stops. The floor of the former hall is paved with granite slabs, and the passage is cobbed. The rear of the hall stack is constructed of large-scale granite ashlar with a chamfered plinth and a hollow-moulded cornice at the top, although the section adjoining the front wall has been rebuilt. The shippon features a good central drain.