Undercleave

Undercleave is a farmhouse, now a house, probably dating from the early or mid-16th century. It has been superficially altered in the 19th and 20th centuries, with a rear wing added in the 16th or 17th century.

The building is constructed of stone rubble, squared and coursed in places. The left gable-wall, concealed by a later addition, is of cob in its upper storey. The roof is slated at the front, with asbestos at the rear and hipped to the right. Red-brick chimneys from the 20th century sit on the left gable-end and at the centre of the ridge. The plan follows the traditional 3-room-and-through-passage layout, with a 16th or 17th-century rear wing behind the inner room and a 19th-century extension in two phases to the left, plus a 19th-century lean-to at the rear.

The exterior comprises two storeys. The front wall of the original building is three windows wide, with one additional window in the extension to the left. All windows in the front wall have 20th-century artificial stone mullions and hood-moulds with metal casements. A gabled porch of the same stone features a 20th-century plank door. The right side-wall of the wing contains a 17th-century chamfered wood window of two lights in the ground storey. The upper storey has two late 20th-century wood casements and an earlier 2-light window with 3 panes per light. The left extension has a 2-light wood casement window with 4 panes per light at ground-storey level, positioned above what was formerly a doorway with surviving right joist and red-brick base. The left side-wall features a plank door with strap-hinges. Other windows in this wall and the rear wall are mid to late 20th-century wood casements, except for an earlier-looking 2-light window in the rear wall of the wing with 2 panes per light.

The interior preserves important features of its original structure. The through-passage has stud-and-panel screens on either side with chamfered studs whose stops are concealed. An original doorway into the hall has a chamfered, slightly cambered head with straight-cut stops. Behind the hall chimney, only the head-beam of the screen survives, a rare survival for Devon.

The hall fireplace is notable for its wood lintel carved with quatrefoils fitted alternately with shields and 4-leaved flowers, with a cornice above carved with 3-leaved flowers. The fireplace is brick-lined with a stone-framed aperture and shelf. Carved chimneypieces of this quality are rare in Devon below gentry-level. The style here is Gothic, a manner that lasted until the 1580s in East Devon. Deeply-chamfered ceiling-beams with large step-stops are visible. A partition with the inner room has been removed, but mortices for two studs survive on its underside. The lower room has a chamfered half-beam similar to that in the hall with exposed joists and a fireplace with chamfered wood lintel without visible stops. The oven in the back has a cast-iron door bearing the maker's name: WIGHTMAN & DENING CHARD.

An early staircase is positioned in the rear left-hand corner, with a small 19th-century wood-framed window featuring a diamond-shaped centre bar and square leaded panes of old glass nearby.

The upper storey contains three pairs of side-pegged jointed crucks with curved lower parts projecting slightly, a fashion more usual in Dorset and Somerset. Through-purlins carry the roof, with the ridge cut into the top of the truss. Collars, where visible, are tenoned and straight. No sign of smoke-blackening is present, except possibly on the truss over the centre of the hall, which could not be examined closely. No evidence of partitioning survives except for stake-holes in the truss above the division between hall and inner room. The entire roof is encased in a later one; to carry this, the wall-heights have been raised. The left end-wall shows the heavily sooted back of a timber-framed chimney. The rest of the original structure has been demolished and replaced with a stone chimney, though a rough cross-beam in the end-bedroom may have been part of its original structure.

The rear wing has a chamfered ceiling-beam with rough step-stops and a window with plank shutters. Its roof lacks principal rafters; instead, the ridge and purlins are carried by three posts rising from the rear wall of the house, with wattle-and-daub filling the spaces between them. The structure is held in position by a collar bird's-mouthed onto the purlins.

Although the house appears to be fundamentally a single build from the early or mid-16th century, the survival of the through-passage screen behind the hall chimney is unusual. In medieval houses in Devon, this was typically removed before a chimney was inserted. The presence of this screen alongside an original chimney is anomalous and suggests either that the original chimney was timber-framed, like the one at the lower end, or that there may have been a brief period of open-hearth use at the end of the Middle Ages before the chimney was inserted. The broad, chamfered ceiling-beams are typically 17th century in Devon and may suggest that the house remained single-storeyed until a late date, with the two panelled screens functioning as "low partitions" in the Devon tradition.