Stockers Farmhouse

Details

SY 29 NW WIDWORTHY

4/141 Stockers Farmhouse - - II*

Farmhouse. Early - mid C16, with major later C16 and C17 improvements, the service end was enlarged in the C18, some C19 and C20 modernisations. Plastered and colour- washed walls, mostly local stone and flint rubble including some cob; stone rubble stacks topped with C19 and C20 brick; thatch roof, part replaced with corrugated iron. Plan and development: 4-room-and-through-passage plan house built across the hillslope and facing east. At the left (north) end is a room with a gable-end stack, now used as a sitting room. Between it and the passage is an unheated room, the present kitchen. The other side of the passage is the former hall with its stack backing onto the passage and a newel stair rising to the front. The left (south) end room, the former inner room, has a gable-end stack. This is a house with a long and complex structural history. The original early -mid C16 house occupied only the former hall, passage and present kitchen. It was open to the roof, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. It was probably a 2-room-and-through-passage house with the former hall where it is now and a service room where the kitchen is now. Plaster from largely superficial C19 and C20 modernisations is hiding much of the evidence of the development of the house through the later C16 and early C17. The hall fireplace was probably added in the mid-late C16. It is not clear when the service end room/present kitchen was floored over since the crossbeam there is a C20 replacement. In the early C17 an inner room was added. Maybe the stack there was added a little later, when the hall was floored. Thus, by the mid C17 the farmhouse had an inner room kitchen, the hall was a parlour and the service end room was a dairy or buttery. In the C18 the northern end was added to the dairy/buttery as a stable or agricultural outhouse. It was brought into domestic use circa 1960 - 70. House is 2 storeys with secondary outshots to rear of the southern end, the passage, hall and inner room kitchen. Exterior: irregular 4-window front of mostly C19 and C20 casements with glazing bars although the half dormer left of centre is an oak flat-faced mullion window (maybe as old as the C18) and it contains rectangular panes of leaded glass. The section left of the passage doorway breaks forward slightly from the rest. The passage front doorway is roughly central and it contains a C20 door. There is a secondary doorway towards the left end (into the inner room kitchen) and it contains a C19 plank door. The main roof is gable-ended, the right end was half-hipped before the stack was inserted here. A photograph in the NMR of circa 1960 shows the house before the right end room was brought into domestic use. Interior: the passage rear doorway has what appears to be a plastered over jamb of a shoulder-headed doorway. If there is such a doorway here it is early - mid C16. There is a late C16 - early C17 oak crank-headed doorframe from the passage which is chamfered with straight cut stops. The fireplace here is blocked by a C19 fireplace. The partition between hall and inner room/kitchen appears to be a plastered oak plank-and-muntin screen. The inner room kitchen crossbeams has deep chamfers and step stops. The kitchen fireplace is blocked but its large size is evident and the oven housing projects into the room. Below the passage the former dairy/buttery - present kitchen has a C20 replacement crossbeam and the end room (present sitting room) has roughly-chamfered crossbeams. On the first floor the size of the original house is defined by hip crucks. The solid end walls into which they were set have been replaced by timber-framed crosswalls and the cruck posts now rest on crossbeams. The roofspace is inaccessible although the farmer reports that the roof timbers and thatch between the hip crucks is heavily sooted from the open hearth fire. Any intermediate truss is buried in the crosswall between hall and passage chambers. The inner room roof is carried on a side-pegged jointed cruck truss and the service end extension roof is carried on A-frame trusses. This is an attractive and interesting farmhouse. It is important because it retains the remains of a small late medieval house, a rare survival. Although much evidence is hidden behind C19 and C20 plaster it seems that a great deal of C16 and C17 carpentry and other detail survives intact.

Listing NGR: SY2121497210

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

88814

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LBS

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