Thong Farmhouse

Thong Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating back to around the 15th century, with significant remodelling in the early 17th century and again in the early to mid-18th century. It is constructed of rendered stone with a clay pantile and double Roman tile roof, featuring gabled ends and a catslide at the rear. Rendered axial and gable-end stacks with weathering are present.

The original layout consisted of a three-room and through-passage plan, with an outshut at the rear. The easternmost room served as the kitchen and the room to the left as the parlour, both featuring gable-end fireplaces. The hall was initially open to the roof. In the early 17th century, a floor and stack were inserted into the hall, and the inner room was extended to create a larger parlour with a chamber above, heated by gable-end fireplaces. An unheated integral outshut was added to the rear of the left (west) side of the house. A wing behind the right (low) end was replaced in the early to mid-18th century with an outshut during a remodelling and re-roofing. The parlour and its chamber were later converted into a cider-house and loft in the 19th century.

The south front is asymmetrical, with four windows. It features 20th-century casements and a 20th-century glazed door leading to the through-passage. The west gable end has a plank door with a loft door above and a small attic window with glazing bars. The east gable end includes a small outshut and an external stack with a brick shaft. At the rear, the roofline drops to low eaves over the outshut.

Inside, the kitchen (east room) has a plastered cross-beam, a bressumer above a blocked fireplace, an 18th-century china cupboard, and remains of a plank-and-muntin partition and a Tudor arch doorframe at the rear. The through-passage has a rebated Tudor arch doorway and a stone flag floor. The hall is ceiled and features a large axial fireplace backing onto the passage, with dressed stone jambs and a moulded timber bressumer. A partition forms a narrow room at the rear of the hall, featuring ovolo-moulded timber windows. The former parlour has a cambered chamfered fireplace bressumer, a smaller fireplace above, a replaced loft floor, and space for a cider press. A plank-and-muntin screen between the parlour and hall chambers has a Tudor arch doorframe, though its original location is uncertain. The hall chamber has an 18th-century chimneypiece with a moulded shelf and grate, overlying an earlier fireplace with a chamfered timber bressumer. The kitchen chamber contains a deeply chamfered axial beam with run-out stops. A staircase from the 18th century, featuring wavy splat balusters, rises from the kitchen. 18th- and 19th-century panelled doors are also present. The attics are ceiled, revealing the 18th-century tenoned-purlin roof structure. Two jointed cruck trusses remain from the late medieval house; one, behind the hall stack, is face-pegged and smoke-blackened on its hall side; the other is over the kitchen.

Thong Farmhouse is a notable vernacular building with a complex history, originating in the late medieval period.