Cooks Hole Farmhouse

Reasons for Designation

DCMS agree yes list

Details

THORNHAUGH

987/0/10040 LEICESTER ROAD 09-MAR-10 COOKS HOLE FARMHOUSE

II A farmhouse, dated C17 and C18 extended with minor alterations in the C19. Built from local limestone with Collyweston slate roofs, with a brick stack to the east gable end.

PLAN: Cooks Hole Farmhouse consists of a long rectangular range with wings to the north and south, that to the north is at the west end of the range, that to the south is to the centre; this wing has single-storey outhouses attached to the south gable end, and in the angle between the north wing and main range is a small single-storey lean-to with a catslide roof. The main range has a large central stack and chimneys at either end, and there is another above the south wing gable; the chimney stack to the east is external and built of brick. There is also a small chimney in the angle between the north wing and C19 addition.

EXTERIOR: The walls are mainly of coursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, and the roofs are covered in Collyweston slate. The house is of one-and-a-half-storeys, and the roofline of north and south wings is slightly lower than that of the main range. The dip and wobble of the rooflines suggest that the roofs have no ridge pieces, and that the roof trusses probably retain much of their original material. The slightly lower Collyweston slate roof of the C19 addition, attached to the west gable end, is the exception. The wall construction of this extension is also more regular, of dressed limestone. Its south elevation has one casement window to ground and first-floors respectively, and an entrance set against the gable end of the earlier house. This now seems to be the main entrance to the house, but there is a blocked entrance in the east end of the south elevation, and vestigial evidence of entrances in the south wing. The main range has tile hung dormer windows in the south slope of the roof, while the south wing has a single similar window to either side. Ground-floor windows are casements under wooden lintels.

HISTORY: Cooks Hole is a remote farm south-west of Thornhaugh village, and seems to have been the only isolated farmstead in the parish at the time of the 1838 Tythe map. The farmhouse appears to be an C18 building with an earlier, possibly C17 core, and with a small C19 addition at its west end. This extension is not shown on the Bedford Estate map of 1838, which otherwise shows the house to have the same plan as it does today (including the outbuildings to the south wing), but it had been built by 1871.

Assuming that the house was originally built as a single dwelling, perhaps as a single or double cell house later enlarged by the addition of north and south wings, its fortune seems to have changed in the course of the C19. The 1900 OS map indicates three dwellings, a decline from single to multiple occupancy which is confirmed by an increase in the number of chimney stacks and entrances: the east end of the house has a brick stack attached to the gable end and a blocked door in the south elevation, the C19 extension has a stack and separate entrance, and the entrance to the central section may have been through a blocked door in the east wall of the south wing. At some time a small chimney was also inserted in the angle between the north wing and the C19 addition, serving a corner fireplace in the north wing which was previously unheated.

SOURCES: Bedford Estate Maps, 1838 and 1871. Copies held in Peterborough City Library. Thornhaugh Tythe map, 1838. Copy held in Peterborough City Library.

REASON FOR DESIGNATION: Cooks Hole Farmhouse, an C18 or earlier house, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Architecture: It is of special interest as a vernacular house constructed of local materials in accordance with local custom and tradition. * Intactness: Its external fabric survives substantially intact. * History: It is of special historical interest for its date, and for the surviving evidence of change and alteration over time. It also forms a significant component of the historic rural landscape. * Rarity: It is a rare example of a substantially unmodernised house of this date.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

507616

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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