Spalsbury Farmhouse Including Garden Area Wall to the South East

Details

UPLOWMAN ST 01 NW 4/172 Spalsbury Farmhouse including - 5.4.66 garden area wall to the south-east - II*

Farmhouse. Early - mid C16, with major later C16 and C17 improvements, some C19 modernisation and a C19 extension. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings; stone rubble stacks, one with a stone rubble chimneyshaft, the others are topped with C19 and. C20 brick; concrete tile roof, formerly thatch, slate to part of service wing and outshots. Plan and development: L-plan house. The main block faces south-east and is built across the hillslope. It has a 4-room plan. The left end room has a large gable- end stack. This room is connected to the hall by a corridor in front of a couple of small unheated rooms. The hall itself has a projecting rear lateral stack. The main stair is between the hall and the right end room which has a gable-end stack. 2-room plan service wing built at right angles in front of and overlapping the left end room. Here the first room has an axial stack and the second one has an outer corner stack. The historic development of this house is not easy to determine. The roofspace is inaccessible but the hall section at least is known to have been open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. The fireplace here was inserted in the mid or late C16 and the hall was floored in the early or mid C17. To right (north-east) of the hall is the stair but this is a C19 insertion into the former inner room. This was a relatively large room which was converted to a kitchen in the mid C17. The 2- room and corridor section to left of the hall appears to have been converted from a through-passage and small unheated dairy, the latter adjoining the left (south-west) room. This left end room also appears to have been a kitchen. This is somewhat confusing but maybe this was a late C16 - early C17 kitchen, later superceeded by the one the other end. House is now 2 storeys throughout. Exterior. irregular 6-window front of C20 casements with glazing bars. Right of centre is the doorway inserted to the C19 stair. Slightly left of centre is thought to. be the former passage front doorway. Both contain C19 plank doors. The first has a C19 gabled porch and the second has a C20 porch with rustic posts. The service wing has C19 and C20 casements, most with glazing bars. The main block roof is gable-ended, the service wing roof is hipped. Good interior: the left end room has a massive stone fireplace with a chamfered cambered oak lintel. The crossbeam here has a broad hollow chamfers with step stops. Between this and the putative dairy the partition includes a crank-headed doorway, maybe part of an oak plank-and-muntin screen. There is an oak plank-and- muntin screen on the first floor directly above. There are two more, one each end of the hall. The lower end is the plainest, its muntins chamfered only on the passage side. The upper end screen has richly moulded muntins; it is probably mid C17 in date. Here is another stone fireplace with oak lintel. The C19 stair occupies one bay of the 3-bay ceiling which, like the hall ceiling, is carried on crossbeams with deep chamfers. The kitchen fireplace is also stone with a chamfered oak lintel and it includes an oven and a walk-in smoking chamber alongside. The 2 present stairs are probably C19, the main one inserted into the inner room and another from the left end room. Both have first floor balustrades which reuse early or mid Cl7 turned oak balusters. The roof is carried on a series of side-pegged jointed cruck trusses. The roofspace is inaccessible and therefore it is not possible to prove whether they are all of the same date. The hall section at least is early or mid C16 and smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The farmer has kept some of the sooted battens which were removed when the thatch was removed. The narrow strip of garden across the front is enclosed by a C19 low stone rubble wall which includes a stone mounting block at the right end.

Listing NGR: ST0244417580

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

96021

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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