Fishpool Farmhouse: rear range

A house of low proportions and plain materials which, tucked away behind the C18 front range as it is, could be mistaken for an agricultural building except that it has a gable chimney and a pair of small dormer windows. It is built of mixed brown and grey rubble, unevenly coursed and with remains of whitewash; the roof is steeply pitched and covered by regularly-coursed blue slate on the front slope and corrugated sheet on the rear slope. It has a 2-unit plan on a N-S axis facing E, with a 1-unit addition at each end. Most of the the right-hand half of the E front of the original portion is now covered by the linking corridor; to the left is a small segmental-headed 2-light window; inside the corridor to the right of the doorway, a small 2-light casement; and the eaves line is broken by two small slate-clad gabled dormers with 2-light casements. At the right-hand gable is a short square rendered chimney with an emphatic chamfered cornice. Attached at the S end is an added workshop or stable which has a doorway at the junction, with an old board door, a small square window near the left corner with an internal wooden shutter; and, in the S gable wall, a plain doorway with a board door, and a rectangular piching door in the gable above. The addition at the other end has a small window in the front wall and a square plain-glazed window at loft level of the N gable. At the rear the original range has a low buttress near the N end, a modern rectangular 2-light casement to the right of this and larger 3-light one offset right of centre, and a small shuttered opening near the S end. The addition at the N end, which appears to have been a 1-unit cottage, has a segmental-headed doorway offset right of centre and a small segmental-headed window either side, that to the left with plain glazing and the other with an outward-opening wooden shutter. The rear of the addition at the S end is blind.

The ground floor has two sturdy chamfered lateral beams and exposed undecorated joists to the boarded upper floor. Between the beams is an inserted enclosed staircase which mounts over the W beam, beneath which there was formerly a stud-and-plank partition (removed to enlarge the small room to the rear of the staircase). The rear wall is about 55cm thick. The E gable wall is about 2 metres thick, and has contains a bricked-up bread-oven in the rear corner and a very deep cupboard in the front corner (probably the poisition of a former spiral staircase). On the upper floor (now a store) are three collar trusses, that to the W with a pegged collar, that to the E with a nailed-on collar replacing the original, and that in the centre with a lath-and-plaster partition.