Description

OTTERTON FORE STREET (south side)
SY 0885
- Otterton
7/167 Housetern Farmhouse
GV II
House, former farmhouse. Early or mid C16 with major C16 and C17 improvements, C18
rear block, modernised circa 1980. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings; stone
rubble stacks, one with its original chimney shaft, the others topped with late C19
brick; thatch roof.
L-shaped house. The main block has a 3-room-and-through-passage plan house facing
north-north-west, say north, with the inner room at the right (western) end. The
inner room is relatively small and has an end stack, maybe inserted in the C19. The
hall has a large projecting front lateral stack and the service end room has a rear
lateral kitchen stack. C18 2-room plan rear block projecting at right angles to
rear of the kitchen. 2 storeys.
Irregular 4-window front of C19 and C20 replacement casements containing rectangular
panes of leaded glass. Front passage doorway left of centre contains a late C19
part-glazed panelled door. Alongside to right is the hall stack. It is plastered
but its shape with weathered offsets and stone rubble chimney shaft indicate a C17
date. Roof is hipped each end. The rear of the hall has a circa 1980 PVC French
window. The rear block also includes a first floor casement with external iron
bars, probably C19.
Good interior of a multi-phase building. The oldest feature exposed is the roof.
The 4-bay roof is carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses with cranked collars.
It appears that the whole house was originally open to the roof although the
evidence is not absolutely conclusive. The roofs over the service end and inner
rooms might be considered slightly sooted from the original open house divided by
low partitions and heated by an open hearth. If so it was not long before the end
rooms were partitioned off and possibly floored. The hall section however was left
open and is heavily smoke-blackened from an open hearth fire. The crosswalls are
plastered but probably include C16 carpentry. The inner room has a plain axial beam
of indeterminate date and the fireplace is C19. The hall was floored in the second
half of the C16 with a 16-panel intersecting beam ceiling made up of soffit-
chamfered beams. The fireplace is probably contemporary. It has jambs made from
single slabs of local conglomerate sandstone and a replacement lintel. The double
shaft on the stack suggests a first floor fireplace, now blocked. The kitchen is
C17. Both the soffit-chamfered crossbeam and the rubble fireplace with its soffit-
chamfered and scroll-stopped crossbeam date from then. The oven was inserted or
relined in the C19. The rear block has A-frame roof trusses with pegged lap-jointed
collars and X-apexes. Most of the joinery detail is C19 and C20 although there are
a couple of C18 2-panel doors.
Houstern is an attractive house with some good internal features and is one of a
number of listed buildings along Otterton Fore Street.

Listing NGR: SY0821685257

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26618766

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

• 
  Northamptonshire: Buildings of England Series (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings and Other Heritage Assets
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey