Description

SX 69 NE SPREYTON HEATH ROAD

1/275 Heath Farmhouse including
stables adjoining to east, and
22.2.67 including front garden walls
adjoining to south
GV II

Farmhouse. Early-mid C18 but parts may be C16 or C17; modernised in mid-late C19.
Plastered cob and stone rubble; stone rubble stacks topped with C19 brick tops;
thatch roof, replaced with corrugated asbestos over stables, rear block and
outshots.
Plan and development: L-shaped building. The main block faces south and is built
across a gentle hillslope. The house has a 3-room-and-through-passage plan house.
At the left end there is an inner room kitchen with a large end stack. The hall,
now the dining room, has an axial stack backing onto the passage which now contains
the C19 main stair. The lower end room is now a parlour with a gable-end stack
backing onto the stable block at the right (east) end. Service rear block
projecting at right angles to rear of the inner room kitchen which contains one
unheated room behind a through passage along the back of the main block. There is a
series of outshots to rear of the main block, the latest one blocking the passage
rear doorway. Although no features earlier than the C18 appear in the house its
plan-form appears to be C16. It may have been rebuilt on the old foundations
although early fabric may survive and be hidden under later plaster. The house
probably began as some form of open hall house, maybe heated by an open hearth fire.
The fireplaces would have been inserted in the later C16 and C17 and the house
progressively floored over. Now the farmhouse is 2 storeys throughout.
Exterior: the main house has a very attractive 4-window front of similar mid-late
C19 2 and 3-light casements with glazing bars. The passage front doorway contains a
contemporary 4-panel door, overlight with margin panes, panelled reveals and flat
hood on shaped brackets (now propped on cast iron posts). The front wall continues
right as the blind rear wall of the stables. The roof is gable-ended. The rear
block (also gable-ended) includes a first floor C19 casement window containing
rectangular panes of leaded glass.
Interior is largely the result of the mid-late C19 modernisation. The large kitchen
fireplace is granite with a soffit-chamfered oak lintel; it is early C18 or even
earlier. No other carpentry detail shows and the joinery and other detail is
consistently mid-late C19. Roof was not accessible except in the stable where it is
carried on A-frame trusses with pegged and spiked lap-jointed collars. The front
garden is enclosed by a low stone rubble wall with rounded granite ashlar coping and
includes monolithic granite gate posts, square in section with rounded heads.

Listing NGR: SX6933597343

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26466632

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

• 
  Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Harrow on the Hill: A photographic portrayal of listed buildings and structures (Historic Buildings Picture Guides)
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides): Written by Charles O'Brien, 2014 Edition, Publisher: Yale University Press [Hardcover]
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Setting up a Listed Building Heritage Partnership Agreement: Historic England Advice Note 5
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)