Description

ST 00 NW KENTISBEARE 7/79 Lower Kingsford Farmhouse - II Farmhouse. Probably late C15, altered and enlarged in the late C16 or C17, with C19 and late C20 modifications. Roughcast cob on stone footings; slate roof, gable ended to left, hipped to right. Pl.an: the exact arrangement of the original house is not certain for it has been substantially altered. It was probably a 3-room, cross passage plan house of which the hall and inner room survive. The 3 bay hall was open to the roof, which contains smoke-blackened timbers, but the inner room (to the right of the hall) appears always to have been of 2 storeys. The house was remodelled in the C17 when a first floor was inserted in the hall, and a rear wing was built, along with a stair turret in the junction formed by the wing and the main ranges. It may have been at this time that the service end was demolished, although the present left- hand end wall and fireplace look later, and the rear wing projects a little to the lower end of it strongly suggesting an even later contraction of the building. Left hand end stack, and a now redundant axial stack between hall and inner room. 2 storeys. Exterior Front: 4 window range, all casements to both floors are late C20. A small fire window survives to the extreme left-hand side of the range. 2 C20 casement windows to right hand end. Rear: with outshut; one early, probably C17, small 2- light window (now concealed by outshut) with chamfered surround and mullion. Later casement set in early embrasure lights stair turret. Rear wing: C20 casement windows throughout, those to the ground floor, outer face of the wing, in C17 embrasures. Interior: the original hall appears to have been divided into 2 rooms in the C17 (when the ceiling was inserted), although it is again now a single room; one cross ceiling beam, boxed, marks the division; to its left (lower end) 2 and one half axial beams, chamfered with hollow step stops. End fireplace with roughly chamfered lintel, and unchamfered jambs. Remains of a plank and muntin screen survive between the hall and inner room, to the right of the inserted stack, with 2 unchamfered but arched jambs of a doorway no longer in situ. The screen, however, is morticed into a jointed cruck truss, and forms the lower part of a partition which rises to the apex of the roof. One cross ceiling beam to rear wing, chamfered with hollow step stops. Roof: jointed cruck construction. Hall of 3 bays; the right hand (higher end) was closed, and is heavily sooted on hall side only. 2 other trusses survive and a third (at the lower end) possibly embedded in the present end wall, or removed entirely. Crucks with unchamfered arched braces and cranked collars, 3 sets of threaded purlins, the apex with a yoke, the ridge piece threaded. (The present occupier describes features, removed about 35 years ago, that sound as if they may have been corbels; certainly there is evidence of there having been some fixture at the point where corbels would be expected, now planed away, ie. at the jointed elbow of the cruck).

Listing NGR: ST0447109108

External Links

• Wikidata Q26593180

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