Risdons

Risdons is a Grade II* listed farmhouse located in Bradford-on-Tone, dating back to the late medieval period. A fireplace was inserted in the 16th century, and a ceiling and rear wing were added in 1635. The building features roughcast over cob and rubble, with a half-hipped thatched roof. There is a rebuilt external stone stack on the right gable end, a stone stack to the right of the cross passage, and a 20th-century brick stack rising from the left gable end of the wing.

The plan includes an open hall facing west, which has been ceiled to create a three-cell layout with a cross passage. Stairs were later inserted into the cross passage, and there is a kitchen wing to the southeast. A range of outbuildings abuts the east side, forming a courtyard at the rear. The farmhouse is one and a half storeys tall, featuring 17th-century ovolo moulded mullioned windows, except for one 19th-century replacement.

To the left of the entrance, there are two gabled dormers with 17th-century carved bargeboards and decorative finials; the right dormer is dated 1635. The ground floor includes a 19th-century mullioned casement window to the left of the entrance and two 4-light 17th-century casements to the right, along with a buttress beyond. The entrance features a Tudor arch headmoulded door frame with a 19th-century four-panel door and a thatched porch supported by wrought iron with built-in seats.

Although the interior has not been seen, it is said to contain evidence of two original doorways to the left of the cross passage, one with a stopped chamfered lintel and the other with a shouldered post that opens into a room originally divided by a partition set in a lateral beam chamfered only on the west face. The hall features a fireplace with a moulded straight stone lintel, moulded beams, and a timber-framed partition leading to the inner room, along with a four-panel compartment ceiling. The upper storey has a depressed four-centred moulded doorframe and a smoke-blackened jointed cruck truss above the cross passage partition, with collar beam trusses and another jointed cruck truss in the wing. Risdons is a very attractive cottage that retains an unusual amount of 17th-century detailing on the exterior of its late medieval fabric.