Description

SY 08 NE
5/88

NEWTON POPPLEFORD AND HARPFORD
Newton Poppleford
STATION ROAD,
Malthouse Cottage and St. Marys Cottage

8.11.84

GV
II*
Two small cottages occupying what was originally a single house. Early or mid C16, modernised in the late C16-early C17, rearranged and made into cottages in the late C19. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings, parts rebuilt with C19 brick; Malthouse Cottage has an original stone rubble stack, the others are of C19 brick; slate roofs and that in Malthouse Cottage is laid over the thatch.

Two adjoining two-room plan cottages facing south. Malthouse Cottage is uphill on the left (western) side and has a C19 end stack in the party wall serving the left room and an original rear lateral stack serving the right room. St. Mary's Cottage on the right has a C19 axial stack serving the left room. In fact each cottage occupies one room of a former three-room-and-through-passage plan house. Malthouse Cottage occupies the former inner room and St. Marys Cottage occupies the former hall. The former service end has been demolished. In St. Marys Cottage the front wall has been rebuilt a little further forward than the original and the right end wall is also a C19 rebuild. Both cottages are two storeys. Each cottage has a two-window front. Malthouse Cottage front is irregular and comprises C20 four-pane sashes with C20 door on- left end. The plaster front is scored as ashlar. St. Marys Cottage front is symmetrical and comprises C20 casements with shutters. Central C20 door with a semi-circular iron tented hood. The roof is gable-ended with that of Malthouse Cottage a little higher.

Good interior despite the C19 rearrangement. Malthouse Cottage has an overall three-bay ceiling carried on original soffit-chamfered crossbeams with step stops, the same finish given the oak lintel of the Beerstone fireplace. The roof is carried on side-pegged jointed cruck-trusses. On the first floor the back of the original upper hall crosswall is exposed. It is a large-framed closed truss and the king stud has a kind of patee cross painted onto it, probably put there in the late C16-early C17. A section of the rear wall and the left party wall is also oak-framed and late C16 or C17 work. Because there is framing in the party wall and the spacing of the trusses does not relate well to the party wall, and because the owner claims that the roof extended continuously into the adjoining left (west) property until replaced circa 1960, the original house may well have extended to a fourth room or be part of a contemporary terrace.

St. Marys Cottage was the former hall. It was originally open to the two-bay roof. The open truss is a side-pegged jointed cruck with unchamfered arch-bracing. The roof is smoke-blackened indicating that the hall was originally open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. The evidence here in the roofspace suggests that a fireplace was inserted into the hall in the late C16-early C17. The fireplace no longer survives but at that time a ceiling was inserted at upper purlin level. Below this the framed close truss at the upper end of the hall (now the party wall) was repainted over the smoke-blackening. The timbers were picked out in orange. This side the full height crosswall can be seen more or less in its entirety. It comprises an oak plank-and-muntin screen at ground floor level split into two bays either side of a king post rising from the sill to the collar. Above the screen the crosswall is large-framed. The muntins of the screen are chamfered with cut diagonal stops and carpenters assembly marks show towards the bottom. It includes the remains of a blocked shoulder-headed doorway towards the rear. The screen was painted in the late C16-early C17 and the ancient colour remains substantially intact, comprising a back ground with cream-coloured stencil designs decorating the planks which include fleur-de-lys, crown, floral and foliate motifs framed by chevrons on the muntin chamfers. Otherwise the rest of the cottage was replaced in the C19.

These two cottages are a classic example of an important late medieval house whose modernised C19 exterior belies a good and well-preserved C16 interior of high quality.

Source. A 1:50 elevation of the upper hall crosswall by John Thorp and dated November 1983 in archive of Exeter Museums Archaeological Field Unit.

Listing NGR: SY0872489763

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17547341

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

• 
  Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Oxfordshire: North and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Development and Design of Heritage Sensitive Sites: Strategies for Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings and Other Heritage Assets