Thatches Farmhouse

Details

HOLCOMBE ROGUS SOUTH STREET, Holcombe Rogus ST 01 NE 5/133 Thatches Farmhouse - GV II

Farmhouse. Early C16 with major later C16 and C17 improvements, refurbished and rearranged a little in the late C19. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings; stone rubble stacks with stone rubble chimneyshafts topped with C19 and C20 brick; thatch roof, slate to rear outshots. Plan and development: long main block faces onto a garden to the south-east. It is an altered 4-room-and-through-passage plan house. The left end room is the former service end kitchen with a large gable-end stack. A newel stair alcove rises to rear of it and, in front of it, a former walk-in curing chamber projects forward. The kitchen has been enlarged by the removal of the lower passage screen. The hall has an axial stack backing onto the site of the former passage. The hall has been enlarged a little by moving the upper hall partition into the former inner room which was, in the C19, converted to the entrance hall containing the new stair. The fourth room, at the right end, is a parlour with an end stack and an alcove alongside for a newel stair. To rear of the hall and passage a rear block projects at right angles and has an outer lateral stack. An alcove in the angle of the 2 wings was probably for a newel stair from the hall. This is a house with a long and complex structural history. The early C16 house was the 3-room-and-through-passage section of the main block. This house was open to the roof from end to end, was divided by low partitions and it was heated by an open hearth fire. Through the later C16 and C17 the hall stack was inserted and the house progressively floored over. The service end was refurbished with a new kitchen fireplace in the early or mid C17. The parlour extension and rear block were probably added about the same time. The house was remodelled in the C19 when the original passage was abandoned and a new entrance inserted into the former inner room where a new main stair was built. The house is 2 storeys with secondary outshots (which have been rebuilt in the C20) across the rear. Exterior: irregular 5-window front of C19 and C20 timber and iron-framed casements containing rectangular panes of leaded glass. The first floor windows rise into the thatch. The roof is gable-ended with an uneven ridge line. Interior: all the ground floor rooms have similar cross or axial beams; they have deep hollow chamfers with step stops and the fireplaces are stone rubble with soffit-chamfered oak lintels, the parlour one with step stops. In the former kitchen there is the headbeam of an oak plank-and-muntin screen which formerly made up of the passage lower partition. The parlour has a curious oak-framed alcove in the front wall. The early C16 roof structure survives intact over the original part of the main block. It is carried on a series of side-pegged jointed crucks. The whole roof, including the common rafters and underside of the thatch is smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The upper hall crosswall is smoke-blackened on the hall side showing that the inner room chamber was built before the hall fireplace. There is a hip cruck arrangement over the former inner room proving that the parlour is an extension. The roof over this part is inaccessible although the base of a side- pegged jointed cruck truss shows on the first floor. This is an attractive, well-preserved and interesting farmhouse.

Listing NGR: ST0568918797

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

95982

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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