Little Upcott

This is a house, likely dating from the late 15th to early 16th century, with extensions and alterations in the later 16th or early 17th century, a remodelling in the late 17th century, a further extension in the early 18th century, and a thorough modernisation around 1980. The walls are largely of plastered cob, reportedly without foundations, with some 19th and 20th-century brick rebuilding and patching. The roof is covered in interlocking red tiles, originally thatched. It is believed the two rooms forming the main south-west facing block represent the oldest part of the house, though subsequent reorganisations make the original layout difficult to determine. An 18th-century crosswing projects to both the front and rear. A projecting section outside the front room contains the 20th-century staircase. The right (south-eastern) end wall of the main block has been rebuilt in 20th-century brick, with a further extension behind. A 20th-century brick stack is at the right end of the main block, and the left room has a cob axial stack backing onto the crosswing, which has its own front-end stack. The house is two stories high. The front elevation is asymmetrical, featuring a four-window arrangement of late 19th and 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars. The central doorway has a 20th-century glazed door and an early 20th-century flat-roofed hood supported by wrought iron brackets. Other sides have similar windows, though one light on the crosswing contains thin diamond panes of leaded glass. A surviving 17th-century oak window frame remains at the rear first floor level, with one of its two chamfered mullions intact. All roofs are gable-ended. Internally, the ground floor carpentry detail is plain where visible. In the right-hand room, the two slender crossbeams are probably 19th or 20th century. The left-hand room’s crossbeam was likely installed in the late 17th century and is a reused beam, set upside down with joist holes along the soffit, clearly intended for plaster cladding. The fireplace is contemporary with a plain oak lintel and a brick-lined oven with a Beerstone doorway. The framed partition between the two rooms is plastered over, but a small section of oak plank-and-muntin screen is exposed, although it lacks datable detail. The roof of the main block displays late medieval timbering, including two face-pegged jointed cruck trusses, with joints reinforced by buried slip tenons and blackened by smoke, indicating a previous open-roofed design heated by an open hearth fire. A third jointed cruck, side-pegged and clean, is secondary and likely dates to the late 16th or early 17th century. The roof over the crosswing was entirely rebuilt around 1980. The ground floor front room contains a runout-stopped crossbeam with soffit chamfering.