Description

SWIMBRIDGE
SS 63 SW
8/175 Marsh Farmhouse, including
rear wall to rear courtyard

GV II*

Farmhouse. C15, refashioned in C17, extended and partly refashioned in late
C18/early C19. Painted stone and cob. Slate roof with gable ends. Rubble stack
with offsets, drip and tapered cap at left end, massive rubble lateral hall stack
to front with offsets and drip. Brick shafts to stacks to rear gable end and to
side of cross-wing. Former open hall and cross-wing plan, the inner room extended
to rear in late C18 or early C19, or this extension could be remodelling of an
earlier outbuilding. Lean-to roof to dairy outshut in rear angle. 2 storeys. 3-
window range. Main range has 2 C19 3-light casements, 6 panes per light to left
side, 8 panes per light to right. Slated lean-to canopy to through-passage porch
with seats to each side wall. C17 ovolo moulded door surround with original plank
door with cover strips. C20 3-light window to left, and C19 3-light window to
right, 8 panes per light. Cross-wing gable end breaks forward slightly and has two
16-paned hornless sashes. Right side has 3-window range of 16-paned hornless
sashes above 6-panelled door, the upper 2 panels glazed, with 4-paned overlight.
Similar sash to right. Old plank door to dairy with slatted grille and 4-plank
door to rear through passage doorway.
Interior: part of plank and muntin screen with exceptionally wide planks survives,
virtually entirely cased in. Stop-chamfered beams and bressumers to hall and inner
room. Latter has stone jambs to fireplace with C20 lintel inserted under the old.
Moulded bressumer to lower end suggests this may have always been floored over, the
truss over this end being plain. The rest of the roof structure, however, is very
fine. 4 large arch-braced trusses over hall with threaded purlins and ridge
purlin. The trusses have short curved feet which formerly rested on hollow-with-
cyma-reversa moulded wall plates, only a section of which survives to centre 2 bays
to rear. The arch braces have ogee-fillets flanked by hollow-chamfered moulded
soffits, the ribs running up from the wall-plates to meet at the centre of the
soffits of the collar. The truss at the inner end of the hall is moulded on its
inner face only and a solid stone wall beyond it demarcates the partition with the
2-storeyed cross-wing. The 2 central trusses are only very slightly smoke
blackened suggesting that the open hall may have always been heated by a fireplace.
1 bay of curved windbraces survives to this end bay but formerly there were 2 tiers
to the 3 bays. The cross-wing has 2 trusses with cranked collars morticed and
tenoned into the soffits of the straight principals. 2 tiers of threaded purlins
and ridge purlin. The rear extension of the cross-wing has C20 roof structure.
Some early joinery survives including some C17 doors to the first floor rooms.

Listing NGR: SS6125630194

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17532365

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

• 
  Oxfordshire: North and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings, Conservation Areas and Monuments
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  The green guide for historic buildings: how to improve the environmental performance of listed and historic buildings
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)