Fender House With Outbuildings

This is a former farmhouse, now a house, dating from the late 16th or early 17th century, with significant modifications and extensions in the late 18th or early 19th century. The building is constructed of rough coursed and squared lias stone in the earlier wing, and squared coursed lias in the later wing, originally forming a two- or three-room plan. The staircase was originally positioned to the right of the fireplace in a room on the right, but is now a straight staircase with a divided landing opposite a late 19th-century porch, and a later wing was added at a right angle to the right.

The front of the house has, at ground level, three three-light casement windows with glazing bars and small internal wood mullions. Above, there is a sixteen-pane sash window and three two-light casement windows with glazing bars. An off-centre, gabled glazed porch with a late 19th-century panelled door (six glazed and three solid panels) provides access. The return wing features a part-glazed door and a nine-pane sash window below another nine-pane sash window, with eaves and ceiling heights greater than those in the older section. Three brick gable stacks are present. The south gable has two added raking buttresses and a single deep-set casement.

Attached to the house is a later 19th-century parallel wing with a gable. The outer gable of the return wing has a small casement at upper level. The rear of the house features a swept-down section and a small conservatory. To the north is a two-story stable with gabled ends; the north front has a two-light mullioned opening and a wide plank door, and the rear gable is heavily overgrown. This stable is linked to the house by a high rubble wall that once covered a stone-paved yard, now covered by a lean-to roof.

Inside, the entry hall contains a straight stick staircase with a divided flight at the top landing. The left parlour retains elements of a four-compartment ceiling with large, deep-chamfered beams approximately 350mm wide, featuring run-out stops. The central transverse beam is narrower, at approximately 150mm wide but still deeply chamfered, and the right-hand two compartments have been altered by the insertion of the later stair hall, limiting their extent to roughly two-thirds of the room, suggesting a possible later extension. There are no fireplaces of particular interest. On the upper floor, to the right of the chimney breast in the north room, at the junction with the later wing, a curved wall indicates the probable location of an original staircase. The roof space was not inspected, but there are remnants of heavy principals in the north end and near the stair-head. A curved principal, now papered over, demonstrates the likely position of an earlier roof, near the staircase end.

The site was used as a bakery in the early 20th century.