Private residence, Moretonhampstead

The existing building group comprises an extensive range of early 20th century “Hambledon” type buildings and a much altered 17th century farmhouse.

There are stables and haylofts and part converted stables/accommodation, a farm mill and water wheel and threshing barn.

The farmhouse has 17th century long house origins at its central core, but has lost its shippon and cross passage to the east, and has been much replanned in the 19th and 20th centuries. An 18th century wing was added to the inner room to the west and a two storey services wing to the north. Various extensions accumulated in the 20th century, further confusing and complicating the group.

This scheme restores the longhouse form and plan by:

  • Re-establishing a main farmhouse entrance
  • Reinstatement of a contemporary cross passage
  • Establishment of a putative shippon as a walled garden
  • Removal of a later stair to allow the original plan of the hall and bedroom chamber to be restored (including repair and reinstatement of the early 17th century decorated plaster ceiling)

The design principles that have been followed are to reinstate some of the lost simplicity and elegance that this late medieval longhouse once had by consolidating and simplifying the earliest thatched and stone structure – the farmhouse – by the removal of later 19th and 20th century additions, re-planning and re-establishing the original plan form of the main chamber/hall inner room, cross passage and shippon.

 

Contractor. Character Builders South West Ltd.