Pulhayes Farmhouse Including Cider House Adjoining To North West

Pulhayes Farmhouse is a mid-17th century farmhouse with an adjoining cider house to the north-west, located in East Budleigh. A barn and wing were added in the early 18th century, and the property was refurbished in the late 19th century.

The main structure is built of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble stacks topped with 19th century brick, and a thatch roof. The original house had a double-depth plan facing south-west. A central through passage, now blocked to the rear in the 20th century, separates a principal front room from a narrow service room either side. The rear rooms are housed in an integral outshot. To the left (north-west) of the passage is the hall with the main stair (a 19th century replacement) rising to its rear. The left room served as the kitchen. Both the hall and kitchen have end stacks, the former originally projecting. The service room behind the hall also has an end stack, though this may be a secondary insertion.

In the early 18th century, a one-room extension was built at right angles, projecting forward and overlapping from the right end with an outside lateral stack. At around the same time, a block was built onto the left (north-western) end, terraced into the hillslope. This contains a narrow unheated cold store adjoining the hall and a cider house beyond.

The main block presents a not quite symmetrical three-window front of 19th and 20th century casements with glazing bars arranged around the central front passage doorway. There is a 19th century six-panel door with a fine contemporary flat hood featuring double scrolled brackets, a panelled soffit, and a moulded entablature with modillion cornice. The wing and cold store each have another window on each floor, all 19th and 20th century casements with glazing bars. The cider store front is blank except for a plank door at the left end opening to the first floor, due to the rise in ground level. The rear elevation features an irregular collection of 19th and 20th century casements, most with glazing bars, plus one PVC window and another containing a probably 18th century iron casement with rectangular panes of leaded glass. A gabled dormer sits over the blocked rear passage doorway, and a canted bay window projects from the room rear of the hall. Lower steps survive from a former external service stair. The main roof is gable-ended to the right, as is the front wing, and hipped to the left, with eaves stepping up from the main house to the extension.

The interior preserves important 17th century features. Both sides of the central passage are lined by oak plank-and-muntin screens with chamfered muntins and straight cut stops. Both main rooms have three-bay ceilings with soffit-chamfered crossbeams and double bar-scroll stops; those in the kitchen have been damaged. The hall fireplace is built of dressed local sandstone blocks and contains a blocked side oven doorway, with an oak lintel finished to match the crossbeams. The kitchen fireplace is blocked by a 19th century replacement, though its original large size is evident, and one end of its original oak lintel, soffit-chamfered with scroll stops, survives visible in a cupboard. The narrow room behind the original kitchen includes part of an oak door-frame with chamfered surround and bar-scroll stop, possibly reset. The doorway from passage to hall is a round-headed arch with an early 18th century architrave; another similar opening leads from the hall to the stairs. The wall between the front and rear service rooms is timber-framed and incorporates the rear posts of the jointed cruck roof trusses. Only one of the side-pegged jointed cruck trusses is exposed, but the roofspace reveals the roof is all of one build. The exposed truss over the kitchen bears a small inscription reading "TF 1644", written upside down as if inscribed before the timbers were erected. The truss collars are pegged and lap-jointed with unusual dovetail halvings. The front wing contains a roughly-finished crossbeam and a probably 18th century round-headed cupboard, with a 20th century chimneypiece. The cold store alongside the hall has a plastered-over axial beam and reuses a 17th century oak two-light window internally as a partition, its mullion ovolo-moulded on the outside and chamfered internally. The cider house contains soffit-chamfered crossbeams of massive scantling and a roof of A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars, and still retains a complete set of 19th century cider-making machinery.

Pulhayes is a well-preserved farmhouse whose original features are consistent with the date of 1644 inscribed on the roof truss. It is now uncommon for a complete set of cider-making machinery to survive intact.