Description

ST 02 SE ASHBRITTLE

103/6/10026 Court Place Farmhouse

GV II

House. Circa late C15; remodelled and extended in C17, C18 and late C19. Rendered stone and possibly some cob. Slate roof with gabled ends. Stone axial and gable-end stacks with rebuilt red brick shafts.
PLAN: 3-room and through-passage plan; originally open to the roof from end-to-end; the hall and the lower service end to left [SW] heated by open hearth fires, with a closed truss on the high sideof the passage separating them; the large inner room was probably originally separated from the hall by a low screen. The hall/inner room open truss was filled in probably during the C16, but the inner room remained open to the roof for a period. The roof is of five bays , and there is a truncated sixth bay at the low SW end. Floors and stacks were inserted , probably in the C17; the service end and the inner room having gable-end stacks, the hall having an axial stack at its high end. Also in the C17 a service wing outbuilding was built at the rear [NW] of the low SW end. The service rooms and stair tower behind the hall might be C18 additions, or they could have been built during the late C19 remodelling, when gables and porches were added to the front and the house was refenestrated.
EXTERIOR: 2 storeys. Asymmetrical 4-bay 3-window SE front, with two larger gables to the left and one smaller gable on the right; C20 casements; ground floor left two late C19 canted bay windows with late C19 gabled porch between; smaller late C19 porch on right. Rear [NW] has projecting additions at centre with three gables; outshut to right between stair tower and service wing and outbuilding on right, forming overall L-shaped plan.
INTERIOR: Lower left [SW] room and former hall have plastered over unchamfered cross-beams and C20 chimneypieces; chamfered beam without stops over hall/passage partition. Inner room has three deeply chamfered axial beams with run-out stops and C20 brick chimneypiece. Several C18 2-panel doors; all other joinery is Victorian, including staircase with turned balusters and newels. Roof structure smoke-blacked from end-to-end; 6 bays plus truncated bay at SW end; side-pegged jointed-cruck trusses with cambered collars, three tiers of tenoned purlins and diagonally trenched ridgepiece; two tiers of curved wind-braces over hall and inner room; the truss at the low end of hall is closed and smoke-blackened on both sides; hall/inner room truss has later wattle-and-daub infilling smoke-blackened on both sides; the truss at the high right end appears to be only lightly blackened. The service/outbuilding wing behing the SW end has chamfered cross-beams with run-out and cyma stops, and has roof with jointed cruck truss and part of a second jointed cruck.
SOURCE: Somerset Vernacular Buildings Research Group: Report, July 1999.

Listing NGR: ST0538021345

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26659923

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

• 
  Devon (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Period Property Manual (New Ed)
• 
  Cambridgeshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Sheffield and the South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)