Lower cil Farmhouse

Lower Cil Farmhouse is a farmhouse, dating in part to the 17th century, with later additions and alterations. The earliest part of the house is the left-hand section, which has roughcast rendering over a timber frame, originally square panelled, and is one-and-a-half storeys high with dormer windows in the roof. A later two-storeyed porch backs onto a stack and a two-storeyed right-hand bay are lime-washed over close-studded timber framing to the front elevation, with some decorative timberwork in the apex of the porch. The rear of this section is framed in square panels and has a higher roof line than the earlier hall. Throughout the building, the roofs are covered with graded slate. A central brick axial stack comprises three star-shaped brick shafts. The porch has a chamfered and roughly formed arched entrance, with a chamfered inner doorway that retains the original studded door with wrought iron hinges and lock plate. Turned rails define the open sides of the porch. The upper storey of the porch is slightly jettied out, with a small two-light casement window. Renewed four-light wood mullioned and transomed windows with small leaded panes flank the porch, alongside two-light casement windows in paired dormer windows to the left, and a three-light wood mullioned window in the slightly jettied upper storey to the right. An outshut is located to the rear of the stack. A rear wing is primarily brick, with some timbering of thin scantling.

Internally, parts of the square panelled framing of the early house remain visible. It appears that the original house had a three-unit plan, comprising a central hall with two service rooms to the left (on the site of the present store rooms, with blocked screen-passage doorways still discernible) and possibly a parlour to the right, lost when the present axial chimney and 17th-century extension were added. The central hall features deep chamfers with stepped stops to paired axial beams, and also has stop-chamfered joists; a queen post truss is exposed in the outer gable. The hall also has arched braces to tie beams of two internal trusses, the tie beams cut through by later doorways, and wind braces to single purlins. In the 17th-century bay, the chamfers are narrower, with bar stops to the paired axial beams. A staircase is located to the rear of the fireplace, likely a later 18th or 19th-century insertion.