The Toft

The Toft

The Toft is a two-storey rural house constructed from local slatestone with a pitched Lakeland slate roof. The building follows a two-cell plan with end stacks and a rear stair hall, and may represent a truncated long house form.

The south elevation presents a symmetrical façade with three first-floor windows and a fourth now blocked, its lintel still visible. A central gabled porch with flanking windows provides the main entrance. The windows retain original timber lintels and narrow slate sills, with a rough slate drip course, though the casements themselves are 20th-century replacements. The eaves are bracketed. The walls are painted slatestone.

Interior joinery is predominantly oak, and door furniture is iron throughout.

The forehouse, or principal room, is entered directly from the porch. A substantial chamfered ceiling beam spans front to back. The east gable contains an inglenook with a bessemer beam supported by a heck post; a later chimneybreast and smaller stone fireplace have been inserted into this space. To the left of the inglenook is an original gable entrance fitted with a four-board plank and batten door; to the right is a spice cupboard with butterfly hinges and oak panel door. A former fire window, now blocked, originally lit the inglenook, and above it a hollowed-out wooden lintel forms a possible cupboard. Several metal hooks are fixed to the ceiling within the inglenook.

The parlour is a smaller secondary room, separated from the forehouse by a plank-and-muntin screen with a central square-headed doorway and three-board plank and batten door secured by round-end strap hinges and simple bar latch. This room has a small fire opening flanked by spice cupboards set within plaster mouldings, complete with butterfly hinges and oak joinery. A further screen of small-square panelling divides the parlour from the rear range, fitted with a square-headed opening and nine-panelled door secured by strap hinges.

The rear range contains several small rooms. From the forehouse, a plank and batten door opens into a former larder with a low stone shelf. A second door accesses a small room with ceiling beams running front to rear; its east wall is formed of plank-and-muntin panelling. From the parlour, a door enters a larger room used as a kitchen, with a small pantry off to the left, accessed by a plank and batten door with upright handle and back plate. A dog-leg staircase with half landing occupies a small rectangular stair hall opening from the forehouse. The staircase has plank-and-muntin panelling with stud and infill partitions above, turned balusters, and simple square newels with ball finials (one splat); the handrail is almost square in section.

On the upper floor, the parlour chamber is enclosed by small-panel screens on two sides, featuring decorative friezes with complex interlocking arcading. An adjacent room, used as an ensuite, retains similar panelling and a high-quality frieze with arcading. The principal bedroom has comparable panelled screens and friezes. At the far east end, a small narrow room above the inglenook retains a timber cross window with vertical stanchions of mid to later 17th-century date, now blocked to the outside.

The roof structure preserves the original design, including a pair of collared trusses with added members, double purlins, and a ridge piece. The principal rafters are basic in nature, following the cruck tradition of split branches; collars and tie beams are formed from whole branches. On one side, the purlins remain staggered and shallowly trenched; on the other, they have been raised by the insertion of timber blocks to produce a shallower roof pitch. Joints are pegged throughout.

All ground-floor screens sit directly on the stone-slabbed floor. Doors are hand-sawn and mostly retain original furniture.