Held at:

Hereford Public Library

Reference:

Royal Commission on Historical Monuments: Herefordshire, Volume 1: H 936.244

Source:

Transcript of Original Publication

Title:

Great Bilbo farmhouse and barn: architecture, construction and history

Place name:

Longtown

Date:

Up to 1700

Description:

 

(7). GREAT BILBO, farmhouse and barn, nearly 2 ½ miles E. of the Castle.    The House is partly of two storeys with attics and partly of one storey with attics, walls are of rubble and the roofs are covered with stone slates. The house is built on an L-shaped plan the wings extending towards the N. and W., the latter being a lower wing and of 15th-century date and the former a late 16th-century addition. The earlier was extended a little westward in the 17th century. Projecting from the middle of the E. front is a two-storeyed   porch, formerly timber-framed, with the upper floor projecting on all three sides and supported on shaped brackets. The side walls have been under-built  in rubble. In front, two  timber posts with shaped brackets are exposed and between them is an arched segmental head with a central projecting cantilever supporting the bressummer of the overhanging upper storey. The inner  entrance (Plate 35) has a moulded oak frame with an inner segmental head and a nail-studded battened door hung on two strap-hinges with ornamental ends.   On the ground floor, N. of the porch, is an original five-light transomed window and on the first floor are three four-light windows. Along the whole front, flanking the porch, runs  a shallow pent-roof supported on shaped brackets. Against the W. wall of the N. wing is a similar pent-roof; on the ground floor is a blocked three-light transomed window and on the first floor two four-light windows. The S. wall of the W. wing has, on the ground floor, one four-light window with oak frame and diamond-shaped mullions.    Inside the building, the 16th-century wing on the ground floor is divided into two rooms by a panelled oak partition with sunk mouldings on the framing. The doorway in the partition has a shaped under-head and a four-panelled door.    The ceilings of both rooms have moulded beams and plates and chamfered joists. Two doorways in the W. wall of this room have moulded frames and segmental sub-heads and both have battened doors. A partition on the ground floor of the W. wing is of heavy chamfered framing with a doorway having a shaped sub-head. The joists are exposed in the ceiling of the passage and there are exposed beams in the ceilings of the other ground-floor rooms. There are two crutches exposed in the middle front of the W. wing.

 

The Barn, N.W. of the house, is timber-framed and weather-boarded with a rubble plinth, the roofs are covered with stone slates. It was built in the 17th century and is of three bays; the trusses have sloping struts between the tie-beams and principal rafters.

 

Condition—Of house, N. wing, good; W. wing, poor.

 

Plate 35: Doors

 

Observations:

Description documented c 1930 by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments

 

Ordnance Survey Map Reference and Index of Parish Properties

 


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