Staplemead

This is a house, likely originating in the 15th century and substantially remodelled around the early 17th century, with later alterations in the late 20th century. It is constructed of chert rubble with a double-Roman clay tile roof, featuring gabled ends. Brick chimney shafts have been rebuilt.

The original plan comprised three rooms and a through-passage, with the eastern end originally unheated and divided into two rooms. Around 1618, the walls were rebuilt in stone, a chimney stack was added at the lower end of the hall, backing onto a wide through-passage. The hall was then floored, and the inner room was extended to form a parlour with a solar above, heated from a gable-end stack.

The south front is asymmetrical, with four windows. It has late 20th-century 2-, 3- and 5-light casement windows with leaded panes, and attic windows within large gabled dormers. A stone porch is positioned on the right, with an oven projection in the angle on the left, both covered by lean-to tile roofs. The porch includes an inner doorway with a late 20th-century plank door set within a chamfered Tudor arch frame. The rear north side features various late 20th-century casement windows, three large gabled attic dormers, and a small outshut on the left, which now contains a conservatory.

Inside, the service room to the east retains chamfered cross-beams with hollow step stops and broad, unchamfered joists. The through-passage is wide, with a timber-frame partition featuring a chamfered shouldered arch doorway to the service room, and a deeply chamfered axial beam with prominent hollow step stops. A doorway from the passage to the hall has an unchamfered, cranked head. The hall features deeply chamfered cross-beams, unchamfered joists, and a large fireplace with a slightly cambered chamfered timber bressumer. A fine plank-and-muntin screen separates the hall from the parlour. The parlour has a framed ceiling with deeply chamfered intersecting beams and unchamfered joists. A winder staircase is located at the lower end of the hall. The hall roof retains smoke-blackened principals with a mortice-and-tenon apex joint and evidence of a missing diagonal ridgepiece. A clean truss, dating from around the 17th century, is found at the upper end of the hall, with trenches indicating missing purlins and a diagonal ridgepiece.

This building represents a good example of a late Medieval Somerset vernacular house.