Taylor's Farmhouse

Taylor's Farmhouse

A farmhouse of 17th-century date with mid-18th-century additions. The building is constructed of local sandstone, rendered to all elevations, with a pitched roof of graduated Westmorland slate and red-brick chimney stacks.

The main building comprises two storeys and four bays. The roof is pitched with end stacks and a ridge stack, and features an eaves cornice above a rubble plinth. The original 17th-century part of the house has three ground-floor and three first-floor windows, all fitted with Yorkshire sliding sashes and with projecting stone sills. A narrow fire window to the right lights the internal inglenook. The mid-18th-century extension to the left features a part-glazed door within a painted flush surround, with a deep lintel inscribed with the initials 'T M T' and the date '1746'. To the right of the door and above is a single sliding-sash window. The right return is blind. The rear elevation is largely obscured by an outshut; where the original rear wall is visible there is evidence of two blocked openings.

Internally, the 17th-century part comprises a firehouse and parlour, originally entered through a deep opening in the east gable around the end of an inglenook. This entrance retains a three-boarded door with an upright handle inscribed with the initials 'ETM' and the date '1733'. The door's rear face retains a large original lock box and a pair of strap hinges. The firehouse has a flagged floor and several substantial, chamfered and stopped timber ceiling beams. Its inglenook is lit by the narrow fire window, and it has a narrow, inserted chimney breast and a bressummer or fire beam immediately to the front which would have supported a former chimney hood. A blocked window to the north wall is evident. An 18th-century fielded large-panel partition separates the firehouse from the parlour; the panel has a shallow recess (plate rack) fronted by a trefoiled arcade above the central boarded door. The parlour contains a bolection-moulded mid-18th-century stone chimney piece and a mid-19th-century arch-headed cast-iron grate. A substantial fixed cupboard with scroll decoration retains the carved initials 'MF' and the date '1700'. A blocked window to the north wall is present. The blocked windows to both rooms became redundant when the rear outshut was later added.

The mid-18th-century addition consists of a cross-passage and a narrow service room. The passage has a flagged floor with openings at either end fitted with timber lintels; at the north end, it leads into the rear outshut, and the inside of this opening retains a wide drip mould above the door, indicating that the outshut here is also a later extension. The service room, now a kitchen, opens off the passage to the east and features a wide-boarded door, flagged floor, chamfered ceiling beam, and a chamfered bressummer or fire beam in front of a former inglenook. An historic circular timber post appears to have been introduced and could be a heck post removed from the firehouse. The rear outshut consists of a central stair tower flanked on either side by a small room, formerly a buttery or pantry.

The staircase is a late-20th-century timber replacement. The first floor retains timber-boarded floors with some very wide floor boards. A 19th-century decorative cast-iron hob-grate is located in the room above the parlour. The pegged timber roof structure to the earliest part of the house remains in situ, comprising three triangular trusses with yokes; two of the tie beams have been cut off at the ends to provide head space. It features double purlins and a ridge piece. A three-panel door between the original house and the mid-18th-century extension is carved crudely with the initials 'T T'. A reconstructed stone chimney piece in what is now a bathroom retains a head identical to that of the parlour chimney piece, with a full-height cupboard bearing 18th-century panelled doors to its left, moved from elsewhere within the building.