The Grange Farmhouse

The Grange Farmhouse

This farmhouse is built of white-painted slobbered rubble with a brick porch, red concrete pantile roofs, and brick chimneys. It is L-shaped in plan, formed by a main range of two wide bays on a north-west to south-east axis, with a short crosswing at the south-east end and a rear extension to that.

The main facade faces north-west and has two low storeys. A doorway is positioned slightly left of centre and is protected by a 19th-century gabled porch with a keyed round-headed outer arch and a panelled inner door. A modern casement window is located on each floor to the left, vertically aligned, and similar windows are situated near the angle of the wing to the right. The gable of the wing projects approximately one metre and has a similar but smaller pair of windows offset to the left. The main range has a gable chimney to the left and a ridge chimney aligned slightly to the right of the doorway.

The south-east elevation is in two parts. The rear part steps forward with a lower ridge-line and contains a window and doorway at ground floor, two windows at first floor, and a chimney on its rear gable. The forward part has two windows at ground floor but only one above, with a corner chimney. The rear elevation of the main range has a segmental-headed former doorway in the centre (at the rear end of an internal cross-passage), now reduced to a window. There are two small segmental-headed windows at ground floor and two square ones above, all with glazing matching those at the front. The roof of the rear portion of the wing extends down to ground-floor level, where there is a doorway and one window.

Interior

The building contains features of undoubted historical interest, though not immediately intelligible as a whole. The front doorway opens into a stone-flagged cross-passage, now closed at the rear. To the north of the cross-passage is a deep but short room with a wide rubble chimney stack set centrally in the gable wall. This stack features a massive oak lintel to a wide fireplace. To the left of the stack is a cupboard which formerly contained an old spiral stair, and to the right is a modern quarter-turn stair. This room is crossed by three long ceiling beams, chamfered but not of high quality, spaced approximately 125 centimetres apart: one against the chimney stack, one in the centre, and a third against the partition wall to the passage. In the cross-passage, a fourth beam forms the head of the other partition wall. To the south-east of the cross-passage, an inserted longitudinal partition creates a corridor along the rear wall (an alteration also carried out at first-floor level), but between the cross-passage and the room to its south-east is a lost space or void approximately two metres deep, above which sits the ridge chimney.

In the front portion of the wing, the ground-floor room has a massive chamfered lateral beam carrying five longitudinal secondary beams, the outer ones set against the side walls. A former fireplace at the north-east end of this room is now concealed, but in the outer corner to its right is a doorway opening onto an original spiral staircase.

On the upper floor, both ranges have upper-cruck trusses: one in each bay of the main range, both with outriggers or dorsals, two in the front portion of the wing, and a jointed cruck in the rear portion.