Lower Besley Farmhouse

Details

HOLCOMBE ROGUS ST 01 NW 4/98 - Lower Besley Farmhouse - II Farmhouse. Mid-late C16, maybe earlier origins, with major later C16 and C17 improvements, some C19 and C20 modernisation. Plastered cobs on stone rubble footings; stone rubble stacks with stone rubble chimneyshafts; asbestos slate roof, formerly thatch. Plan and development: 5-room-and-through-passage plan house facing south. At the right (east) end is a former service end kitchen with a gable-end stack. Between this and the kitchen is a small unheated room, maybe a dairy originally but now a bathroom. The other side of the passage is the hall with its stack backing onto the passage. At the upper end of the hall is another small unheated room and beyond that the left (west) end room with a gable-end stack. This end room may have been a parlour. A 1-room plan unheated service room projects at right angles in front of an overlapping this end room. The passage rear doorway is now blocked and there is a gabled stair turret projecting to rear of the former. Since the roof is inaccessible it is not possible to determine the early structural history of the farmhouse. Nevertheless it seems likely that it was some kind of open hall house. The hall at least was open to the roof and if the roof timbers are smoke-blackened then it was heated by an open hearth fire. The hall was floored over in the late C16 - early C17. The service end was probably refurbished as a kitchen about the same time. Also about the same time the left end room, the putative parlour, was added. Before that the unheated inner room was the end room. House is 2 storeys with single storey C20 extension to rear. Exterior: irregular 4-window front of various C19 and C20 casements with glazing bars. The passage front doorway contains an old studded plank door behind a C20 gabled porch. Roof is gable-ended. Interior: is largely the result of C19 and C20 modernisations. For instance, all the fireplaces are blocked and at least 2 oak plank-and-muntin screens are known to be plastered over, one on the lower side of the passage and another at the upper end of the hall. There may be a third between the former dairy and kitchen. The kitchen cross bead is chamfered with lambstongue stops and there are here the remnants of a mid or late C17 moulded plaster cornice. The stair turret is C17 or earlier but now contains a C20 stair. The hall has a good late C16 - early C17 9- panel ceiling of deeply chamfered intersecting beams. The inner room has a mid C16 half beam; it is chamfered with pyramid stops. Between this and the end room is the former end solid wall. The end room axial beam has deep hollow chamfers. There are other beams in this room but they are papered over. They include a jowl-headed post in the rear wall. The roof is inaccessible but a side-pegged jointed cruck can be seen over the hall. A great deal of the C16 and C17 fabric is evidently hidden and great care should be taken with any building works here lest early features be disturbed.

Listing NGR: ST0454818096

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

95948

Legacy System:

LBS

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