Charleshayes Farmhouse

Charleshayes Farmhouse, Upottery

Farmhouse dating from the late 15th to early 16th century with major improvements in the later 16th and 17th centuries, and minor alterations in the 19th and 20th centuries. The building is constructed of plastered local stone and flint rubble, possibly with some cob, with stone rubble chimney stacks—one topped with stone rubble and the other with 20th-century brick. The roof is slated, formerly thatched.

The house follows a 3-room-and-through-passage plan facing south-south-west. At the west end is a small unheated inner room, formerly a dairy or buttery. Next to it lies the hall with an axial stack backing onto the passage. On the opposite side of the passage, at the east end, is a service end kitchen with a gable-end stack. The house is 2 storeys with a secondary outshot behind the hall.

The structural history is complex. Most or all of the original late 15th to early 16th-century house was open to the roof, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. The inner room may have been floored from the beginning, or was floored over by the mid-16th century. The hall stack was probably inserted in the mid to late 16th century, and the passage and service end were probably floored over at the same time. The hall was floored over in the late 16th to early 17th century. The service end room was refurbished and probably enlarged in the mid-17th century as a kitchen.

The exterior features an irregular 3-window front with some 19th-century casements with glazing bars, but mostly 20th-century casements without glazing bars. The passage front doorway is right of centre and contains a 19th-century panelled door behind a contemporary gabled porch. The roof is gable-ended. Along the back facing the road is a 20th-century pent roof across the passage and kitchen, and a 17th-century oak 2-light window with chamfered mullion at first floor level over the passage rear doorway.

The interior contains several notable features. In the passage, the lower kitchen-side partition is an oak plank-and-muntin screen, possibly an original low-partition screen. The kitchen itself retains mid-17th-century features: a chamfered crossbeam with elongated scroll stops and a large fireplace, now blocked but evidently intact. From the passage to the hall is a late 16th to early 17th-century oak Tudor arch doorway, probably contemporary with the hall ceiling. The hall ceiling is a 6-panel ceiling of intersecting deeply-chamfered crossbeams (one beam was damaged when the present 19th-century stair was inserted). The hall fireplace is blocked by a 20th-century grate. At the upper dairy and buttery end is an oak plank-and-muntin screen, its back exposed in the dairy/buttery, with a chamfered and step-stopped half beam also present.

The roof throughout is carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses, probably original. The roofspace, accessible only over the passage and kitchen, is certainly original and heavily smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire.

Charleshayes is an interesting and well-preserved multi-phase Devon farmhouse with late medieval origins. It has been little modernised since the 19th century, and other 16th and 17th-century features are likely hidden behind later plaster.