Fair Garden Farmhouse is a Grade II* listed building in the Exmoor National Park local planning authority area, England. First listed on 5 June 1985. Longhouse.
Fair Garden Farmhouse
- WRENN ID
- late-outpost-harvest
- Grade
- II*
- Local Planning Authority
- Exmoor National Park
- Constituency
- Tiverton and Minehead MP: Rachel Gilmour (LD)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 5 June 1985
- Type
- Longhouse
- Address
- Fair Garden Farmhouse, Wootton Courtenay, Somerset
- OS grid reference
- SS 932 421
- Coordinates
- 51.16842, -3.52798
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Fair Garden Farmhouse is a longhouse dating from the late 15th century, with a ceiling added in the 16th century. A kitchen wing was added around 1600, and the inner room was rebuilt in the late 17th to early 18th century. The farmhouse was restored in the late 20th century. It features roughcast over random rubble and cob, with some exposed rubble at the lower end. The roof is slate, with a steeper pitch at the lower end. There are external stone stacks at the west gable end and the north gable end, both capped with brick, as well as a brick stack to the left of the cross passage. The building is arranged in an L-plan on a slope, with stores and cattle sheds to the left of the cross passage at the lower end, and two rooms to the right, including the north kitchen wing addition and a winder stair.
The south front has two storeys, with all late 20th-century wooden casements. The wall slightly breaks forward, featuring three first-floor windows, while the end two bays are unlit on the first floor. The original lower wall height is preserved. On the ground floor, there are two windows to the left of the entrance, one to the right, two stable doors at the lower end, a small window to the left of the end door, and a tiny glazed opening to the left of the cross passage entrance. The entrance has a plank door. The interior has not been seen but is said to contain three pairs of jointed cruck trusses in the center, showing smoke blackening, with the lower end trusses rebuilt and a rebuilt pair at the parlour end. A report by the Vernacular Architecture Group describes it as "the best example yet found of a longhouse in Somerset."
Local climate
Fair Garden Farmhouse sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,130 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 88% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 95% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 10 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 90% of listed buildings. Of these, 5 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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