Almost next-door neighbors, although separated by spacious sites, these two farmhouses are of the familiar five-bay formula, which meticulous restoration around 1990 elevated from years of shabby decline. They possess a somewhat commanding, abstract demeanor, with aspirations, one suspects, to status a tad more removed than other examples of their type from their vernacular origins. This assumption arises from the volumes of these houses, which broad side elevations especially seem to inflate. Both boast exceptionally well-proportioned fronts, with center doors and windows separated from the four windows on either side by an interval just wide enough to emphasize the axis, yet not so wide as to jeopardize the elevations' unity.
The shingled, clapboard-front White Homestead has a gable roof with center chimney and a simple transomed door. It is turned sideways to the road so that its front faces full south. The Edward Cook House faces the road, although angled slightly south. Its paired chimneys spread to anchor the angles of the hipped roof, thus opening the center of the house to a through hall. Although it is shingled on three
These scattered early farmhouses and their handsomely stone-walled fields, now lovingly and reticently maintained mostly as country places for the well-to-do, are a prelude to the continuation and culmination of the idyll in Little Compton.