Sleath Farmhouse is a substantial and exceptionally rare probably mid-C16 cruck framed hall house. It is a one-and-a-half storey house with a rubble stone wall to the SE and a brick wall to the NW. It also has a slate roof with brick stacks and a projecting stone stack at the SE gable. The SW front has four C20 gabled dormers with boarded heads. The ground floor has segmental arched openings with brick voussoirs and projecting keyblocks. To the rear is a two storey NW wing with brick walls, a hipped slate roof and a brick end-stack. There is a Tudor arched entrance doorway on the ground floor, which projects slightly, as well as a broad segmental arched window opening , which is now boarded over.

As a C16 hall house, Sleath Farmhouse is three unit with cross passage plan, with entry into a wide stone flagged cross passage. There are doorways to the hall (right) and a service room (left) and a C19 staircase ahead (to left) and a blocked stone doorway (far right). There is also a quarter-turn stair with landing with plain square-section balusters and square newels with incurving moulded cap. Between the passage and service room, there is a partition with horizontal plank boarding to the lower part and interwoven wattle panelling of riven oak staves above. The hall has well-preserved C16 post and panel partition, chamfered posts with straight-cut stops. The hall ceiling beams are ovolo moulded with scroll stops whilst the hall fireplace has a deep, chamfered wooden lintel and chamfered monolithic stone jambs.The parlour also has a flat ovolo moulded head to the window, chamfered beams and a stone voussoired fireplace arch. The first floor has three surviving pairs of the exceptionally fine cruck trusses with mid C16 carpenters' marks. The large cruck blades some 5.5m high, measure 450mm wide at collar and some 500mm wide at tie beam. Crucks have notched collars and two tiers of purlins: the top row trenched, the bottom row supported by angle-struts from the ends of the tie beams. The roof timbers are smoke blackened from being over the former open hall. Whilst the east pair of crucks survive complete; the middle blades have been sawn off below the collar, and the west pair are sawn away below the tie beam. There are collar and tie beam trusses to the east and west, and an open truss in the centre (over the former hall). The tie beam of the east truss has been cut through and the collar cut away, to accommodate a door opening inserted presumably after the hall was floored in the early C17.

It is listed as an extremely unusual survival of a C16 cruck-framed hall house, which despite some C20 alterations, retains fine cruck trusses and interior detail of the C17, when the floors and chimney were inserted.

Source:- Cadw listed buildings, NJR 15/12/2008

[Additional] The medieval core of Sleath farmhouse is a cruck-framed hallhouse-longhouse of exceptional interest. The lower bay retains a tethering beam integrated with the cruck-truss and a framed passage partition with open panels for feeding cattle from the cross-passage. The phasing may be summarized:
(1) c. 1550. A cruck-framed and timber walled hallhouse-longhouse of four bays.
(2) c. 1600+ Chimney and floor inserted with ovolo-moulded detail.
(3) c. 1850. Downhouse converted to kitchen. Brick dairy and passage addded on N. side.
The derelict farming building to the S. include a collapsed cruck-framed barn sited parallel with the house.
R.F. Suggett/RCAHMW/Jan. 2009