Hey Farmhouse

This is a detached farmhouse, dating from around 1500 with later additions. It is believed to have been originally built as a grange, or farm belonging to Forde Abbey in Dorset. The house is constructed of local stone rubble with Ham stone ashlar dressings, and has a Welsh slate roof concealed behind high coped gables, indicating a previous thatched roof. One chimney stack is brick, the other is ashlar. The building follows an "L" shape, with a three-bay south front. Corner buttresses are present, angled on the southwest corner and square on the southeast. Hollow-chamfered mullioned windows, with 3, 4 and 4 lights to the ground floor and 2, 4 and 5 lights to the first, are set within chamfered recesses. The lower ground floor windows are deeper than those above, and the windows in the first bay have deeper and more heavily moulded labels, while the remaining windows have a more typical 17th century appearance. A projecting porch with a segmental-arched outer doorway and a boarded inner door, set within a cambered recess, is located in the lower bay of the left side. The east gable is plain, and there is a rear extension. Angled buttresses to each corner of the west gable give a visual flourish, with a small squint window (a narrow window for light) and a projecting chimney with decorative offsets. The rear elevation includes two 2-light windows with cinquefoil (five-lobed) cusped tracery, set under deep square lintels to the west end. Another similar window at ground floor level is obscured by a late 20th century extension, and a cambered-arched doorway is also present. Inside, the house originally comprised two rooms at the front, with a kitchen wing to the rear, and a stairway rising between them. The entry to the west room is accessible from both the front and back, but likely extended further east originally. The west room features a high, four-panel ceiling with slightly cambered beams, including hollow-step-ogee moulding. A modern fireplace is set within the large west gable fireplace. The east room has three crossbeams, two cambered and one flat, the latter likely indicating the original position of a screen. A cambered arched fireplace in the rear wall backs onto the kitchen fireplace, now fitted with a grate but known to have had a bread oven. A cellar is located below the main structure. The first floor west room has two fireplaces, one with a flat chamfered stone lintel and the other with a flat chamfered timber lintel. The roof of the wing is likely 19th century, constructed of reused timber. The main roof has arch-braced collar beam trusses, mostly closed at some time, with three rows of purlins on each side and windbracing. The east end of the roof differs in detail from the west. A previous description from 1958 suggested a possible eastward extension, but there is no obvious indication of this.