Description

BURLESCOMBE
ST 01 SE
9/9 Higher Houndaller Farmhouse
-
5.4.66
- II
Farmhouse. Probably C16 origins, major late C16 and C17 improvements, modernised in
mid C19 and again in early C20. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings; stone
rubble stacks topped with C20 brick; interlocking tile roof, slate to the workshop
end, formerly thatch.
Plan and development: 5-room-and-through-passage plan house facing west-north-west,
say west. The rooms each end are additions to the original 3-room-and-through-
passage plan house. The additional room at the left (north) end was a dairy but was
converted to a garage in the C20. Next is the original inner room parlour with its
former gable-end stack now axial and backing onto the dairy/garage. The hall has a
projecting front lateral stack and the hall and parlour break forward as far as the
front of the stack. Service end kitchen has a former gable-end stack, now axial
and backing onto an additional workshop at that end. The early historic development
of the house is impossible to work out in detail since the main roof was replaced
(and probably raised) in the later C17 or early c18. Nevertheless it seems likely
that the house began as some form of open hall house, maybe heated by an open hearth
fire. The hall fireplace would have been inserted in the mid-late C16 and the hall
floored in the late C16-early C17. The kitchen was rebuilt or extensively
refurbished in the mid C17. The hall and parlour fronts were thrown out in the late
C17-early C18, at the same time that the walls were raised and a new roof built.
The additional rooms each end were probably added about the same time. The passage
rear doorway was blocked in the C20. House is 2 storeys throughout.
Exterior: irregular 1:2:2 window front of C19 and C20 replacement casements
containing rectangular panes of leaded glass. The passage front doorway is set left
of centre and contains and C18 or C19 solid doorframe, flat-topped with rounded
corners, and a wide studded plank door. The monopitch hood is C20. Roof is gable-
ended and steps down from the main block to the workshop.
Interior is largely the result of C19 and C20 modernisations but where carpentry
detail is exposed it is C17 and, since the original layout remains, more early work
is probably hidden behind C19 and C20 plaster. For instance, all the fireplaces are
blocked by C19 and C20 grates. The service end kitchen crossbeam is soffit-
chamfered with scroll stops. The hall has an 8-panel intersecting beam ceiling with
richly-moulded timbers. It stops short of the front wall indicating that its
insertion predates the hall bay. No beam is exposed in the inner room. Roof is
inaccessible but the scantling of the bases of the A-frame trusses which do show are
large enough to suggest that they are late C17-early C18. The additional rooms have
plain carpentry detail.
The place is first mentioned in the C12 Canonsleigh cartulary.
Source: Devon SMR.

Listing NGR: ST0564214455

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26400322

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

• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990
• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  This Old House: Restoring, Rehabilitating, and Renovating an Older House
• 
  Essex: Buildings of England Series (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Building Small Projects (New Best of Fine Woodworking)
• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)