Higher Cowley Farmhouse Including Barn, A Shippon Attached To South West End.

Higher Cowley Farmhouse, including barn and shippon

A farmhouse with attached barn and shippon in Kentisbury, Gratton Lane. The farmhouse is probably early 17th century, though earlier fabric may be concealed beneath later alterations. The building was refenestrated in the 19th century. The attached barn and shippon date from the 19th century.

The farmhouse is rendered stone rubble with some cob, covered by a bitumenized slate roof that is half-hipped at the right end of the main range. The barn is of unrendered stone rubble with a gable-ended slate roof. An axial stone rubble hall stack was rebuilt in the 20th century, backing onto a cross-passage, with a brick stack at the gable end of the lower end wing.

The farmhouse follows a basic three-room-and-cross-passage plan with the lower end to the right. A gable-ended two-storey wing projects at right angles from the front lower end, creating an L-shaped plan. The barn and shippon extend from the left end of the farmhouse, forming an overall three-sided front courtyard arrangement.

The farmhouse interior consists of a relatively small hall, heated by a large axial stack backing onto the cross-passage, with a projecting stair turret to its rear. Solid stone rubble walls rise to the roof apex at each end of the hall. To the left is a narrow, unheated inner room, divided by a 19th-century axial brick partition into two smaller rooms. The rear room was used until recently as a salting-house; the front room forms an entrance lobby to an inserted 19th-century front doorway. Beyond the inner room, part of the barn range at the upper end has been taken into use to form a small kitchen. In the mid-20th century, a second staircase was inserted in the cross-passage when the house was divided into two occupations. The ground floor of the lower end was not accessible at the time of survey, but superior window lintels at the lower gable end suggest it was probably an unheated parlour. It could not be determined from exterior evidence alone whether the gable-ended front wing was a later addition, though the gable-end brick stack is probably a later insertion.

The building is two storeys, with chambers over the main range housed almost entirely in the roof space. A single 20th-century inserted gabled dormer is present. The roof is carried down to form a canopy over a reused cross-passage doorway with a four-panelled door, the upper panels glazed, to the right of the hall projection, which has two 19th-century two-light casements (nine panes per light to the left, six panes per light to the right). A stone rubble porch with a corrugated iron lean-to roof stands in line with the hall and left projection, at the inner room lobby entrance, with a 19th-century plank door and a small 20th-century two-light window above. The lower end wing has single 19th-century three-light windows on each side and a four-light window to the front gable end with timber lintels. The right end of the main range has 19th-century four-light windows on each floor, with three panes per light to the upper storey and six panes per light to the ground floor, both with 17th-century ovolo-moulded timber lintels terminating in hollow step stops. Small window openings with mainly 19th-century fenestration intact are present to the rear of the main range, including the projecting stair turret. The barn, attached to the left end, has double plank doors to a rear cart entrance and a plank door to the front. A blocked doorway and window to the inner face are present, with a loft door over the plank door to the gable end of the shippon, which projects at right angles to the front left end of the barn.

No ceiling beams survive to the hall or inner room, though the inaccessible lower end is said to contain roughly chamfered axial beams. The hall fireplace lintel was replaced in the 20th century. The 19th-century fittings, including ledged plank doors on both floors and a straight run staircase in the rear stair turret, are completely unaltered. The roofspace is not accessible, but the purlins over the hall and inner room are entirely carried by the solid wall partitions rising to the roof apex, so only a single truss exists to the main range, sited over the lower end with slightly curving feet and chamfered soffits to the principals. Before the insertion of the staircase in the cross-passage, the whole first floor of the lower end formed the principal chamber, heated by a concealed fireplace in the back of the hall stack showing the outline of an unusual peaked timber lintel with hollow step-stopped chamfer. An apparently infilled doorway in the rear wall of the chamber may indicate that originally a second stair turret provided separate access from the parlour.