Goldcombe Including Walls To Garden To The West

House, formerly a farmhouse, including walls to the garden at the front (west). The building dates from the late 16th or early 17th century in origin, extended and remodelled in brick around 1700, with 20th-century renovations. It is constructed of hand-made Flemish bond brick, with the rear right wing partly of stone. The roof is 20th-century tile, formerly thatched, hipped at the left end and gabled at the right end, with hips at the ends of the wings. There are brick chimney stacks at the right end and an axial position on the main range, and another axial stack to the rear right wing.

The plan is overall U-shaped, consisting of a west-facing main range with rear left and right wings at right angles and a rear outshut between the wings. The main range is 4 rooms wide. An entrance to the right of centre opens into a lobby facing an unheated service room. A large room to the right (south) is heated from the end stack. Two rooms to the left (north) are heated from back-to-back fireplaces in an axial stack.

The right end of the house is from the late 16th or early 17th century, with interior features predating the external walls. The plan type, with an entrance facing a small unheated service room, is more common in east Devon than elsewhere in the county. It is unclear whether the existing right end room was originally the hall or the service end of the late 16th or early 17th-century house, which must have had an integral outshut as the only doorway into the service room is on the rear wall. The left end was probably remodelled as two heated parlours when the external walls were rebuilt in brick; straight joints in the brickwork suggest this was done in sections. The rear wings may have been added at the same time. It seems likely that, whatever the original status of the right end, it became the kitchen and service end after the remodelling, with a small heated room in the rear right wing probably serving as a back kitchen. 20th-century renovations replaced the thatched roof with tile and involved some repartitioning.

The exterior is 2 storeys. An asymmetrical 5-window front shows numerous horizontal and vertical straight joints and variations in the colour of the brickwork, suggesting piecemeal rebuilding. A 20th-century front door is positioned to the right of centre. There are 3 ground floor and 5 first floor windows, mostly 2-light 19th and 20th-century timber casements; the ground floor window to the right is 4-light. To the north-west of the house, a section of circa 1700 tall brick garden wall retains round-headed blind arcading. A low brick wall to the garden to the west is also included in the listing.

The interior of the right hand (south) room features a chamfered step-stopped crossbeam, an open fireplace with a chamfered timber lintel, and a plank and muntin screen forming the partition with the entrance lobby and unheated service room. The west and north partitions of the service room are of stud construction with plaster infill; the plaster has been removed on the west side facing the entrance. The fireplace heating the extreme left hand (north) room has a rounded brick fireback of early 18th-century character.

The roof contains one late 16th or early 17th-century side-pegged jointed cruck truss surviving over the south end, with later roof structure above it. The south wing has been re-roofed in the last 1970s or 1980s. The north wing roof trusses are probably late 17th century.

This is an interesting evolved house with a historic plan form. The hand-made brick construction is characteristic of a limited area of east Devon but appears elsewhere on the Combe estate, notably at Parkers in Gittisham village.