Description

UPOTTERY
ST 20 NW
7/105 Little Ullcombe Farmhouse
-
- II
Farmhouse, now 2 cottages. Mid C16 with major late C16 and C17 improvements, some
C19 extensions, renovated circa 1980. Plastered local stone and flint rubble, maybe
with some cob; stone rubble stacks topped with C20 brick; thatch roof.
Plan: 2 adjoining cottages made by subdividing a 3-room-and-through-passage plan
house and bringing into domestic use C19 agricultural outbuildings each end. The
building faces south-east and is built on level ground. The left (south-west)
cottage has a 3-room plan. At the left end a former small barn has been converted
to domestic use. Next to it is the former end room of the house; it is an unheated
inner room which is now used as a kitchen but was originally a dairy or buttery.
The third room of this cottage is the former hall with an axial stack backing onto
the former pasage which is now in the right cottage. This right cottage occupies
the passage, the former service end kitchen with an axial stack (formerly a gable-
end stack) backing onto a former agricultural outbuilding which has now been
converted to domestic use.
The original 3-room-and-through-passage section has mid C16 origins. The roof
timbers are apparently clean and therefore it would seem that the house was built
with the hall stack. It was presumably part-floored at the beginning; the hall at
least was open to the roof but the chamber over the dairy/buttery is considered an
original feature even though it jetties into the upper end of the hall. The service
end was refurbished as a kitchen in the early or mid C17, probably at the same time
as the hall was floored over. Farmhouse is 2 storeys.
Exterior: irregular 4-window front of C20 casements with glazing bars including a
dormer window over the passage. The passage front doorway is roughly central and
there is another doorway immediately to right; both contain C19 plank doors. A
third front doorway has been inserted further left (into the former inner room) and
it has a C20 door behind a contemporary porch. The roof is gable-ended and has uneven
eaves lines and is brought down as a pent roof on plain timber posts in front of the
right cottage.
Interior: the former inner room has no main beam but most of the large scantling
axial joists are original and are cantilevered over the inner room/hall partition to
carry the jettied chamber over. The partition is a large-framed screen. The hall
too has no crossbeam. The large hall fireplace is limestone ashlar with oak lintel
and chamfered surround. The former service end kitchen ceiling was renewed circa
1950 but the C17 fireplace remains; it is stone rubble with an oak-framed front and
had an oven. The roof is carried on side-pegged jointed crucks with cambered
collars and includes a hip cruck with the remains of a gavel-fork arrangement at the
inner room end. The roofspace is inaccessible but the owner (who undertook the
circa 1980 renovation himself) is sure tnat the timbers were not smoke-blackened.

Listing NGR: ST2105509739

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26461870

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
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  Maintaining and Repairing Old Houses: A Guide to Conservation, Sustainability and Economy
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  A Buying and Owning a Listed Building: A Brief Guide
• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)