Fold Farmhouse

Description

Fold Farmhouse MYD14133 (c) YDNPA, 2023

Fold Farmhouse, outwardly a stone-built farmhouse of early to mid-17th century and later date, incorporates the remains of a high quality timber-framed building erected on a site adjacent to Kettlewell parish church in the late 15th & early 16th century. The original building included a four bay open hall with closed king post trusses at each end and three arch-braced collar trusses in between. The roof, smoke blackened from a former open hearth, has cusped wind braces and carved braces up to the ridge, but their absence towards the south end implies that this was the lower end with services south of the hall and the solar to the north. Neither survived the rebuilding of the house in the early to late 17th century as a two-storied, three room stone built farmhouse with entry into a central housebody. Moulded timbers in the roof of the farmhouse however are likely to be from a ceiling in the solar.

It is not clear whom the hall was built for. In 1293 the manor of Kettlewell was divided in half by two Fauconberg brothers. This hall, close to the church may have been the manor house or administrative centre of one of these halves, which continued separately until the 16th century. At this time, the dissolution of Coverham Abbey (who had owned one of the manors from the late 13th century) and the execution of the Earl of Westmoreland who owned the other manor, led to them being sold off and broken up. Alternatively it might have been a grange for Coverham Abbey or even Fountains Abbey who both owned land in the area.

Source:

RCHME (1995) Fold Farmhouse, Kettlewell. Historic Building Report. Swindon: National Monument Record Centre