Description

UPOTTERY
ST 20 NW
7/117
- Tiphayes Farmhouse including barn
adjoining west
GV
II
Farmhouse. Early - mid C16 with major later C16 and C17 improvements, modernised
circa 1980 and the roof was rebuilt after a fire in 1985. Local stone and flint
rubble with some C19 brick dressings; stone rubble stacks with stone rubble
chimneyshafts; thatch roof, barn roof of slate, formerly thatch.
Plan and development: 3-room-and-through-pasage plan house facing south and built
down the hillslope. Uphill at the left (west) end is an unheated inner room. It
was originally the dairy or buttery; it is now a library. Next to it is the hall
with an axial stack and a newel stair turret projecting to rear. Downhill at the
right (east) end is a service end kitchen with a gable-end stack. A turret projects
in front the kitchen fireplace; it may have been for a stair but this is by no means
certain. The kitchen is now used as a dining room and the present kitchen occupies
a C19 outshot to rear.
Since the roof was destroyed in 1985 it is not possible to determine the original
layout of the house. The owners believed that there were smoke-blackened timbers in
the roof before the fire although the truss over the service end kitchen was
definitely clean. It therefore seems likely that tne house began as some form of
open hall house heated by an open hearth fire. There is now very little evidence of
any mid or late C16 work in the house as might be expected if the house were early
C16. The date of the hall chimneystack is uncertain. However the hall and inner
room and the full height crosswall between appears to have been built in the early
C17. The hall stair dates from the same time and the hall was floored over at this
time. The service end kitchen may also be early C17 or maybe it is a little later.
The house is 2 storeys.
Exterior: irregular front fenestration, 4 ground floor windows,these with low brick
segmental arches over, and 3 first floor windows; all are C20 oak-framed casements
with glazing bars. The passage front doorway is right of centre and there is here
an early C17 oak doorframe with cambered head and chamfered surround. It contains a
C20 door and the gabled porch is early C20. In the right end wall there is an oak-
framed window with chamfered mullions, a C20 replacement of a C17 window here. In
the rear wall the hall and inner room have original C17 oak windows with chamfered
mullions. The roof is half-hipped to left and gable-ended to right.
Interior: the lower side of the passage is lined with an oak plank-and-muntin
screen, its muntins chamfered with straight cut stops. The head of the doorframe is
a C20 replacement. This screen maybe C16 and, if so, it is the only feature older
than the early C17 exposed in the house. The hall fireplace has been somewhat
altered although it still has a chamfered oak lintel. The crossbeam here is
chamfered with step stops, the same finish given to the muntins on the oak plank-
and-muntin screen at the upper end of the hall; the stops are high enough to
accommodate a bench below. There is no beam in the small inner room. The service
end kitchen crossbeam is plain chamfered. The fireplace is large, built of stone
rubble and has a chamfered oak lintel. It contains 3 bread ovens of various dates.
The lintel continues to the left wall over what is now the entrance to a dairy in
the barn beyond. In fact this was originally the entrance to a walk-in curing
chamber and the top part of the chamber which includes a blocked return flue at
first floor level is preserved.
At the top of the newel stair there is a small lobby to rear of the hall stack
screened off from the chambers either side by short oak plank-and-muntin screens
containing crank-headed doorways. There is another similar doorway between hall and
inner room chambers. The roof was completely replaced in 1985 but the new trusses
were made in the shape of jointed crucks.
The barn: adjoining the right end of the house is an old barn which has now been
brought into domestic use. It has 3-front doorways, the centre one was once part of
the opposing doorways onto the threshing floor. The roof includes trusses of
various dates. The oldest 2 are jointed cruck trusses held together by slip tenons.
Stylistically these are early but these are clean and designed to carry a diagonally
set ridge; they are thought to be C16. The building has been so much rebuilt in the
C19 that it is not possible to establish whether or not these trusses were built or
reset here. The truss nearest the main house is early -mid C17; an A-frame with
dovetail-shaped lap-jointed collar. The other trusses are C19.
Source: An annotated plan and description of the house by P. Childs in Devon SMR.

Listing NGR: ST2097209248

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26390403

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  A Buying and Owning a Listed Building: A Brief Guide
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair
• 
  Surrey (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)