Upton Farmhouse Including Outhouse Adjoining To South

Farmhouse at Clyst St Lawrence

Upton Farmhouse is an early 16th-century building with major later 16th and 17th-century improvements, some 19th-century alterations, and thorough renovation and partial rebuilding in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with parts rebuilt in local sandstone rubble and late 19th and early 20th-century walls in brick. Stone rubble and brick stacks are topped with 20th-century brick. The main block has a thatch roof, with the remainder slate roofed.

Plan and Development

The main house follows an L-plan, with the main block facing east and containing a 2-room plan with a central through passage. The right (northern) room has a large projecting gable-end stack, and the left room has a rear lateral stack shared with the first room of a 2-room rear block projecting at right angles. The rear room is the kitchen with a gable-end stack. On the left (south) end of the main block is an outhouse, now used as an agricultural store, forming a crosswing that projects forward at right angles.

The main block appears to derive from an early 16th-century 3-room-and-through-passage plan. It now contains the former lower-end service room (at the right end), the passage, and the hall (the left room). An inner room once occupied the part of the outhouse adjoining the main block. The original house was open to the roof from end to end, divided by low partitions, and heated by an open hearth fire. The evidence for this development was hidden or removed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, though the stacks serving the main rooms are large enough to suggest 16th or 17th-century dates.

The outhouse section projecting forward was a 2-room plan parlour wing built in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The first room was a fine parlour, probably heated by a lateral stack in the outer (southern) wall, though this was rebuilt in the 19th century leaving no evidence of its original form. There was a small unheated room (perhaps a buttery) at the front end. In the 19th century, all internal partitions were removed, the roof was rebuilt, the outer wall was reconstructed, and the building was converted to an agricultural outhouse. The house is two storeys.

Exterior

The main block has a symmetrical 1:1:1-window front of early 20th-century mullion-and-transom windows with glazing bars. The first-floor windows of the outer bays have gables over them. The centre bay contains an early 20th-century 2-storey gabled porch that projects only a short distance from the main block. The lower stage of the porch has an elliptical outer arch with trellis sides. Behind it is a fine late 16th and early 17th-century front doorframe: an oak Tudor arch with a moulded surround containing a very good contemporary studded oak plank door with moulded cover strips, strap hinges with fleur-de-lys finials, and an oak lock housing. The main block roof is tall and steeply pitched, half-hipped at each end.

The front (north side) of the outhouse retains its original late 16th and early 17th-century oak-framed windows: a ground-floor (former parlour) 5-light window and a first-floor (former parlour chamber) 4-light window, both with richly moulded reveals and mullions. A doorway to the left (to the former buttery) has a contemporary oak Tudor arch doorframe containing an old plank door. The outhouse roof is hipped at the front end.

Interior

The main block interior largely results from 19th and 20th-century modernisations, though the early layout is still preserved. A heavily restored late 16th and early 17th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen runs along the former hall side of the passage, and another similar screen is said to have been removed from the other side. In both rooms, the beams are boxed in and the fireplaces are blocked by 20th-century grates.

The former inner room (now in the outhouse) has a 20th-century beam, and much of the outer walls have been rebuilt. However, much of the original roof survives. It was originally 3 bays (including the inner room end). Now only the truss over the former hall-inner room partition remains; it is a side-pegged jointed cruck. The other truss (over the hall-passage partition) was removed in the early 20th century, although the original purlins and ridge were left and propped up. An original hip cruck exists at the service end. The roof over the former inner room section has been rebuilt, although the stubs of the purlins show that it originally extended over that part of the house. All original timbers, including the common rafters, battens, and original thatch that still remains at the front over the main block section, are heavily smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. There is evidence of a smoke louvre over the former hall.

The outhouse/former parlour crosswing contains late 16th and early 17th-century carpentry detail. The parlour itself has a 4-panel ceiling of richly moulded intersecting beams with exposed joists moulded with step stops. The former buttery has a chamfered and step-stopped crossbeam. The roof structure is 19th-century, carried on a series of king post trusses; however, the front (north) wall retains the posts of the original side-pegged jointed cruck trusses.

Setting and Historical Associations

Upton Farmhouse forms a group with its adjacent courtyard of traditional farm buildings. In front of the house stands a cast iron statue of the Blue Boy, one of four original figures from the School of St Johns Hospital in Exeter, which was destroyed by bombing in 1943. The farmhouse still belongs to the St Johns Hospital Charity.