Minchen Cottage

Minchen Cottage, Aylesbeare

House, formerly a barton possessed by the nuns of St Katherine's Priory, Polsloe, Exeter, and from 1592 the manor house of Aylesbeare. Built in the late 15th to early 16th century, thoroughly renovated in 1589 according to a datestone, radically reduced in size and rearranged in the early 20th century, and modernised circa 1960. The main block is partly exposed, partly plastered local stone rubble with some Beerstone ashlar detail. The service block is of early 20th-century brick. One chimney stack is of Beerstone ashlar, much of it carved, and dressed red sandstone. The other stack is probably of local stone rubble with an early 20th-century brick shaft.

The building is L-shaped with the main block facing south-west. The main block includes the medieval hall as adapted when it was floored and a front projecting lateral stack was added in 1589. The house derived from a probable 3-room-and-through-passage plan. The passage was on the right (south-eastern) side, as evidenced by the surviving bressumer of the lower end jetty over the passage screen, which was removed circa 1960. Since the early 20th century or before, the inner room end has been replaced by a small single-storey lobby, the passage has been disused, and the service end rebuilt. An early 20th-century single-storey service block projects to the front of the service end. The former hall has a front projecting lateral stack of 1589, and the former service end has a stack between the room there and the 20th-century service room extension. The main block is two storeys.

The main front is dominated by the hall chimney stack of very high quality. It is built of Beerstone ashlar with some smaller blocks of red sandstone. A block towards the base is carved with a pair of sunken quatrefoils. It has ashlar weathered offsets. The shaft uses Beerstone and red sandstone to create a chequer effect, and the Beerstone blocks are carved with various geometric motifs all round. One block on the front is inscribed with the date 1589. Below the dripcourse is a band of Beerstone carved with quatrefoils containing various heraldic achievements.

Contemporary work to the right includes an exposed stone wall containing a ground floor 3-light Beerstone window with flat-arched heads, sunken spandrels and hoodmould, and a first floor 3-light Beerstone gabled half-dormer with square-headed lights and a hoodmould ending on the left side with a sunken quatrefoil instead of a label. Further right is a 20th-century entrance porch with the service wing beyond and an early 20th-century half-dormer, the contemporary chimney shaft and a gable end. To the left is the 20th-century doorway to the lobby, which has a red tile lean-to roof against the slate-hung gable end of the hall. To the rear of the hall is another Beerstone 3-light window with flat-arch headed lights, though the hood has been knocked off. The service wing contains 20th-century windows and a door. The inner side includes two reset date plaques: one inscribed TS 1691, the other WS E 1765.

The interior, apart from the hall, has been completely rebuilt in the 20th century. The stack serves both ground and first floor fireplaces. Both are Beerstone ashlar: the former has bead-moulded jambs and a replacement oak lintel, probably of the 17th or 18th century, and the latter has a chamfered surround. Only the lower end jetty bressumer survives on the ground floor. It is soffit-chamfered with step stops and has traces of probably early 17th-century painting showing a geometric design incorporating a Biblical text, only part of which is easily legible.

The roof over this part is late 15th to early 16th century. It is two bays with an open side-pegged jointed cruck between similar closed trusses, and single sets of windbraces. It is smoke-blackened, indicating that the original hall was open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire.

Although only a fragment of the early house remains, it is of superior quality and very attractive. The Devon Record Office holds measured drawings and photographs made by A W Everett circa 1950, which include an oak plank-and-muntin screen with early 17th-century painted decoration at the lower end of the hall. Subsequent modernisations have otherwise made little difference.