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

• Wikidata Q17532365

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  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Old House Eco Handbook: A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy-Efficiency & Sustainability
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