Bay Farmhouse and attached former pig house

Bay Farmhouse and attached former pig house

Bay Farmhouse is a former open-hall house originally built in the 15th century, subsequently altered in the late 16th and 17th centuries, and extended and altered further in the 19th century. It was renovated in the early 21st century. A small former pig house is attached to its south-west corner.

The building is constructed of coursed, cut and squared lias stone rubble with stone dressings and some later brick, under gabled and hipped roofs covered in double Roman tiles. The main roof was probably originally thatched. There are gable-end stacks of red brick and a ridge stack to the left of centre. The windows are mostly 20th-century timber and metal casements and timber sashes, the latter brought from elsewhere. There is one early pegged timber window in the rear elevation.

The house is L-shaped in plan, comprising a three-unit, cross passage house oriented on a west-east axis, with 19th-century and early-21st-century additions to the rear. A small lean-to, the former pig house, stands against the west gable end.

The main four-bay range is one and a half storeys high, with rear additions of one and one and a half storeys. The principal south elevation features early-21st-century raised ashlar kneelers. The entrance, positioned left of centre, has a half-glazed timber door, probably 19th-century and altered in the mid-20th century, under an open-sided gabled porch. Three 20th-century casement windows of three and five lights with internal secondary glazing light both floors. Ground-floor openings have timber lintels. The east gable wall has sash windows on each floor, both with timber lintels and brick surrounds. A small wooden cover to the left of the ground-floor window covers a former meter recess. A single-light window lights the ground floor. The later addition to the right is built of stone rubble and timber wainy boards, with a modern window in the east wall and a plank door in the north, beneath a catslide roof continuing from the 19th-century addition. This section features a three-light casement within a segmental-arched brick surround, and a doorway on the west elevation with a segmental-arched brick head containing a flat-arched plank door in a modern frame, with a brick stack down the roof slope. To the rear of the main range, the cross passage is marked by a modern door and vertical side light, with a small pegged two-light timber window to the right of the entrance. Rooflights are present. The west gable end has a modern first-floor window and metal ties.

Internally, the principal entrance opens to the cross passage with a timber partition of overlapping planks on one side and an inserted modern stair to the rear. A doorway in the partition leads to a room, probably a former kitchen, containing a fireplace with lias stone jambs and a chamfered bressumer, and a roughly-finished ceiling beam spanning the width of the building. The northern part of this room has been partitioned off with timber planks, probably in the 17th century. To the right of the passage, the former hall contains a large inglenook fireplace with timber bressumer and stone jambs (one possibly rebuilt), a deep-chamfered panelled ceiling with some parts renewed, and a deep-chamfered half-beam extending the width of the fireplace. Both fireplace and half-beam abut the foot of the central roof truss. The room's east wall has a timber plank partition and a doorway through to the 'inner' room at the east end of the building, which has an early-21st-century stone fireplace with chamfered bressumer and a deeply chamfered ceiling beam with cyma stops spanning the room. A stone inscribed with a shoeprint and the initials JS, found during renovation, has been set into the side of the chimneybreast. An opening in the north wall of the former hall accesses the 19th-century rear kitchen addition, which is modern in character. Ground-floor internal doors are ledged and braced and modern. The first floor has wide elm floorboards and several plank doors, not all necessarily in original positions. The roof structure contains two side-pegged jointed crucks, including one that may have been a closed truss from the outset, and an arch-braced true cruck occupying a roughly-central position over the former hall, all smoke-blackened with upper sections concealed by ceilings. Two rows of trenched purlins are present, a diagonally-set ridgepiece visible in the roof space, and evidence of previous single-tier wind-bracing. Later timbers date probably from the 19th century; the roof is now supported by early-21st-century steels.

The former pig house dates from at least the late 19th century, appearing on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1887. Built against the south-west corner of the house, it has a stone rubble south wall, a vertical stone slate wall on the west side, and is open to the north under a monopitched roof of double Roman tiles. The roof has been repaired and the internal floor is laid with stone slabs.