Birds Farmhouse

439/0/10010 08-MAY-02

WEST MONKTON DYERS LANE Bathpool Birds Farmhouse

II

Farmhouse. Circa C15; remodelled later and extended in C19. Rendered cob and painted stone rubble. Slate roof with gabled ends. Gable-end stacks with C19 brick shafts. PLAN: 2-room and cross-passage plan with C19 straight staircase in widened passage and with gable-end stacks, the left [W] stack with a large fireplace with an oven and a stair turret projecting at the front; circa C19 cider house at the east end incorporating putative inner room. Circa mid C19 wing behind left [W] room and outshut behind right [east] room. EXTERIOR: 1 storey and attic. Asymmetrical 3-window south front; C20 casements, that on right in raking dormer, with large late C19 canted bay window below to left; central doorway with panelled and glazed door and C20 glazed porch; rectangular stair turret projecting on left with small window on front. Lower roof on right over cider-house. Outshut and projecting oven on left [W] end. At rear [N] gable-ended wing on right with sashes and outshut on left with catslide roof. INTERIOR: Right-hand [east] room circa mid C19 moulded plaster ceiling cornice and rose. Cross-passage/entrance hall has C19 straight staircase with simple balustrade of chamfered stick balusters and tapered chamfered newels. Left [west] room C20 chimneypiece in blocked fireplace and deeply chamfered ceiling beams; plank doors to cupboard to side of stack and to winder stairs in turret at front. C19 plank and panelled doors. Bracketed shelf over fireplace in rear wing and Victorian grate in room above. Surviving two bays of fine C15 roof with jointed-cruck collar trusses, the centre truss with chamfered arch-braces, three tiers of curved wind-braces [lower tier missing] and with intermediate trusses with cusped principals. Originally there were further bays to west where purlins continue and to the east where a wind-brace on the end truss has been truncated. The roof structure is not smoke-blackened. SOURCE: Somerset Vernacular Buildings Research Group, report January 2002. Bird's Farmhouse is a good example of a multi-phase Somerset vernacular house with two surviving bays of a fine C15 roof structure.