The Last Straw

The Last Straw is a house dating from around the 15th century, with remodels in the early 17th century and an extension from the 18th century. It is constructed from squared coursed lias stone and features thatched roofs with gabled ends, along with gable end and axial stacks that have brick shafts.

The building has a three-room and through or cross-passage plan, with the lower end located to the right (northeast) and a one-room plan wing at the front of the higher left end. The hall and high end, and likely the low end, were originally open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire in the hall. In the early 17th century, an axial stack was added to the low end of the hall, backing onto the cross-passage, likely when the hall and both ends were floored. A 20th-century partition in the hall forms an axial passage at the front.

The exterior is two storeys high with an asymmetrical southeast front featuring four windows. The windows are small casements with leaded panes. There is a doorway on the left with a 20th-century lean-to porch at the angle of the projecting gable-ended wing. The inner return of the wing has 18th-century two and three-light casements with leaded panes, with the first floor set in a small gable. The rear (northeast) side has one, three, and four-light casements with leaded panes, and eyebrow eaves over the first-floor windows.

Inside, the hall contains a chamfered axial ceiling beam with cyma stops and a large stone fireplace with a similarly stop-chamfered timber lintel. The rear room at the low right end also features a similar axial beam. In the parlour (left), a cross beam is boxed in, as is the cross-beam in the wing. There is a smoke-blackened raised cruck truss against the high side of the hall stack, with its apex tenoned into a triangular block (yoke) that is truncated to support a large square set ridgepiece. The south blade of the cruck has chamfered moulding with a ball stop below a missing collar. Large purlins are set on the backs of the cruck blades, along with some smoke-blackened common rafters. The roof over the low northeast end is inaccessible.