Description

YARCOMBE YARCOMBE
ST 20 NW
7/203 Calways Farmhouse
GV II
Farmhouse. Mid-late C16 with a major mid Cl7 improvement, renovated circa
1975. Local stone and flint rubble, plastered on the front; stone rubble stacks
topped with C19 and C20 brick; thatch roof to the main house, tile roof to
the outshot.
Plan and development: 3-room-and-through-passage plan facing west and built
down the hillslope and terraced into it at the north end. The uphill (northern)
room is an unheated inner room, probably a buttery originally. Next to it
is the hall with an axial stack backing onto the passage. Now the rear passage
is blocked by a C20 staircase. The former stair was a newel in a lobby between
the passage and hall in front of the hall stack. The right (southern) room
is a kitchen with gable-end stack. The original house was probably floored
both ends but the hall was open to the roof. The hall fireplace and chimneystack
is an original feature. The hall was floored over in the mid C17 and at the
same time the lower end was completely rebuilt as a kitchen. 2 storeys with
C20 service extensions on the right end.
Exterior: the main house has an irregular 4-window front of C20 casements
containing rectangular panes of leaded glass. Most of the first floor windows
rise a short distance into the eaves. The passage front doorway is right of
centre and contains a C20 part-glazed plank door behind a contemporary thatch-
roofed porch on plain timber posts. The main roof is gable-ended to right
and has a low half hip to left.
Interior: the inner room ceiling is made up of C20 joists. The inner room/hall
partition has been mostly removed but the headbeam of the original oak plank-and-
muntin screen remains, so too do the jambs of the Tudor arch-headed doorway.
The doorframe is unusual being chamfered on the inner room side. The original
hall fireplace is blocked but its oak lintel is partly exposed. The Cl7 crossbeam
here has deep chamfers with step stops. An original Tudor arch doorway leads
from the hall to the former stair lobby between the hall and the passage.
The top of another similar doorway has been used as a window frame in the back
wall of the hall; it is thought to have come from one end of the passage.
The features of the service end kitchen are all mid C17. Along the lower side
of the passage is an overlapping plank screen containing a doorway with a cranked
head. The kitchen has a large stone rubble fireplace with a chamfered oak
lintel and an oven doorway in the right cheek. Originally a newel stair rose
over the oven housing to right of the fireplace but this was removed circa
1975 in order to provide a doorway through to the extension. The original
roof structure survives over the inner room and hall and is carried on clean
side-pegged jointed cruck trusses. Their collars have been removed since they
were only 1 metre or so above the first floor level. The roof over the kitchen
is mid Cl7 and also carried on a clean side-pegged jointed cruck truss but
here the collar is higher. Calways is one of an attractive group of listed
buildings in the village of Yarcombe.

Listing NGR: ST2447008339

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26593171

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

• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  London 1: The City of London: City of London v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Development and Design of Heritage Sensitive Sites: Strategies for Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)