Description

EAST AND WEST BUCKLAND
SS 63 SE
3/18
- Huxtables Farmhouse
20.2.67
GV II

Farmhouse. Early C16, remodelled in late C16 and again in early C17. Unrendered
stone rubble. Concrete tiled roof with gable ends. Axial stone rubble stack and
brick stack at right end.
3-room-and-cross-passage, former open hall house, the hall stack unusually sited
away from the cross-passage at the upper end of the hall. 2 staircases, one
inserted in cross-passage and another running up rear wall of inner room.
2 storeys, 3-window range. C20 fenestration. 2-light casements, 2 panes per
light. Two 3-light casements to ground floor, 3 panes per light flanking plank
door. Pigeon-hole to left of right-hand top window. The inner room end is,
unusually, blind on both floors, principally owing to a concealed internal lateral
stack inserted to the front of the inner room, the shaft having been demolished.
Dairy outshut to rear of hall.
Interior: low plank and muntin screen between hall and cross passage, 6 planks
wide, the muntins chamfered. Doorway to centre, the lintel removed, with old
reset 4 plank door. The screen at the rear end had had 2 sections removed to make
another doorway into the hall, but this has again been infilled and the screen
replaced in same style. Chamfered jetty bressumer over screen with mortices for
joists supporting loft floor over cross-passage, only one of the joists partly
survives with step-stopped chamfers. Above the jetty beam is another chamfered
step-stopped bressumer which, with the cross ceiling beam, chamfered with pyramid
stops, supports the inserted hall ceiling. Integral bench below hall window.
Dressed stone jambs to hall fireplace which has slightly cambered stone arch
instead of usual lintel. Brick-lined oven. Fine 4-centred arched doorway with
chamfered surround into inner room to right of fireplace. Inner room has roughly
chamfered axial beam. Cambered brick arch to fireplace with further brick-lined
bread oven.
Old, possibly C18, thin chamfered surround to hall/dairy doorway.
Part of the original roof structure survives with C20 roof timbers superimposed.
Solid cob walls rise to the apex of the roof between hall and inner room and cross-
passage and lower end. Single raised cruck truss over hall with morticed and
tenoned collar, 2 tiers of threaded purlins and threaded ridge purlin, all
thoroughly smoke-blackened. The surviving purlins over the inner room appear to be
clean, and the 2 trusses over the lower end were replaced probably in C19. It
appears, therefore, that the inner room was probably from the outset, the hall
originally open to the roof and jettied at the lower end, while the lower end
itself, to judge by a straight joint to the rear wall, was rebuilt, in the absence
of surviving features, probably in the C17.

Listing NGR: SS6644330849

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26454829

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Georgian Style and Design for Contemporary Living
• 
  Oxfordshire: North and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Somerset: North and Bristol: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  England's Post-War Listed Buildings