Trivor Farmhouse (aka Tre-Ivor)

Trivor Farmhouse

A tall and imposing house of strongly massed architectural character, built of sandstone rubble with roofs of partly small stone slate and partly blue slate, and chimney shafts apparently of 19th-century red brick. The building is dominated by a very large and highly unusual porch-cum-stair-turret and 2 massive stacks, each topped with a cluster of 6 diagonal chimneys.

The plan centres on a 2-unit, 2½-storey hall-and-parlour range on a northeast-southwest axis facing southeast, with the parlour at the northeast end and the porch-stair-turret overlapping the junction and rising above the eaves. To the southwest of the hall, on the same axis, is a 1-unit kitchen range, and to the rear of the parlour is a 1-unit wing, both of 2 lower storeys. Attached to the rear of the kitchen range is a parallel service range added in the 19th century. Fox and Raglan suggest that the hall block with its porch wing was built around 1630 "together with one wall of the rest of the L-shaped design", when building ceased abruptly, and that the parlour with its rear wing and the kitchen were completed around 1690. However, internal evidence suggests a more complicated sequence of building and rebuilding.

The southeast façade is dominated by the porch-stair-turret, which has a square-headed outer doorway in the centre with an oak doorcase. It features one small 2-light wooden mullioned window on each of 3 levels above, all offset to the left with the topmost in the gable. Similar windows appear on 4 levels of the left side (the 3rd having 3 lights) and on 3 levels of the right-hand side (the topmost with 3 lights). A brick chimney stands on the gable.

Left of the porch, the hall has a wooden mullion-and-transom window of 6 lights with brick voussoirs and ovolo mullions with diamond leaded glazing. The chamber above has a 5-light mullioned window with a wooden lintel, similarly detailed. At the left gable is a massive, extruded chimney stack breaking through the roof of the lower kitchen range and topped by clustered brick shafts. The kitchen range has a doorway with a gabled wooden canopy and a board door, one small segmental-headed 2-light casement on each floor to the left, and a brick chimney on the gable.

Right of the porch are windows on 3 levels: the first 2 are restored cross-windows in openings of late-17th-century character with segmental heads and rubble voussoirs, while the topmost is a 19th-century 6-pane fixed window. At ground level is a cellar doorway. At the southwest gable-end of the kitchen range is a large flight of steps up to a loft doorway.

At the rear, the hall-range has a doorway at the junction with the rear wing, with a pegged oak doorcase, a restored 3-light window to the right, a 2-light casement above the door (both with segmental brick heads), and a square attic window with modern glazing. To the left is the wing to the rear of the parlour, which has a doorway in the angle and a restored cross-window on each floor to the left. Its northwest gable wall has a 4-light wooden mullion window at ground floor and a small 2-light attic window in the gable. At the junction of the wing with the main range another massive chimney stack breaks through the roof, with diagonal shafts like those on the other one. Overlapping and breaking forwards at the southwest corner is the 19th-century service range, which has 2 windows on each floor (2 and 1 lights at ground floor, 2 and 2 above).

Interior

The hall has a stone flagged floor and 4 broad lateral ceiling beams with 2 orders of Renaissance-style moulding on the sides. At the southwest end is a large square fireplace. A former doorway to its left is now blocked up and a new doorway has been inserted to its right. An external doorway stands at the north end of its rear wall with a 17th-century cupboard to the left. Coupled doorways to the porch and staircase have 19th-century doorcases and doors. At the northeast end is stud-and-plank partitioning which is neither full-width nor full-height: it extends from the front wall to approximately 1 metre short of the rear wall and terminates in a rail approximately 300 centimetres below ceiling level. A 19th-century doorway offset right of centre in this partition leads to the parlour.

The parlour has 3 axial beams, chamfered but otherwise of indifferent quality, and a deep stone chimney breast against the rear wall. A pegged oak doorway to the right of the chimney, with a slightly arched lintel, opens into a recess which now forms a lobby to the rear wing by a recently inserted doorway, but perhaps formerly contained the foot of a spiral stair. Some 17th-century wall panelling now in this room is ex situ. In the ground-floor room of the rear wing, backing onto the chimney breast in the parlour, is a fireplace with widely spaced stone jambs, showing that there was formerly a very large fireplace in this room.

The stair-turret contains a full-height framed newel staircase with a vertical void well (closed except for a doorway at 1st-floor level). To the left on the 1st landing is a doorway to the chamber over the hall, which has a strongly shaped arched lintel with a pair of rolls at the apex. To the right is a recessed lobby with a segmentally arched doorway to the other chamber. The chamber over the hall has 4 lateral beams with decoration like those below and some evidence of a former arched fireplace at the southwest end (with a recently-inserted fireplace within it). In the west corner of the northeast end is a 17th-century doorway with a shaped lintel like that of the main doorway but less emphatic, and a board door on strap hinges. This opens into a small lobby which now gives access to the rear wing by a doorway broken through the rear wall, but it was probably formerly either a closet or a garderobe.

At 2nd-floor level, a large attic above the hall (said to have been used for Catholic worship) has 2 principal-rafter roof trusses which appear to date from the 18th or early 19th century, with bolted half-lapped collars. At the northeast end is a plastered studwork partition with a niche. Crossing over the northeast corner is a wooden bridge linking the top floor of the stair-turret with the attics to the rear. In the other attic (which has a broken ceiling), the rear of the partition to the main attic includes a principal-rafter truss at a lower level than the present roof, which at this point is carried by struts mounted on top of it—otherwise similar to the roof of the main attic. In the roof space over the rear wing, the exposed back of the rear-wall chimney stack shows the outline of a formerly lower and more steeply pitched roof. This evidence that the present rear wing has replaced a formerly smaller wing is confirmed by the foot of a principal-rafter trapped at the rear of the stack, which is exposed in the recess to the left of the stack in the second attic. Such evidence strongly suggests that Fox and Raglan's interpretation of the main phases of building needs to be revised.