Treasbeare Farmhouse

Treasbeare Farmhouse is a cob farmhouse with a complex building history. It probably dates from the early 16th century with major early 17th-century improvements, and was modernised and enlarged around 1850–60.

The structure is built of plastered cob on rubble footings, with replaced and patched sections of 19th-century brick. The west side has three plastered stacks, all with ashlar chimney shafts; the rear two probably have ashlar stacks while the front one is probably brick. The front block has another brick stack with a 19th-century brick shaft. The roof is slated, although the rear block was probably thatched before around 1850–60.

The house is L-shaped. The main block now faces south, while the older west-facing house has been relegated to service use. Before around 1850–60, the building was apparently a three-room and through-passage plan house facing west, with the service end at the right (southern) end. Both the hall and inner room have projecting front lateral stacks. Around 1850–60, an unheated dairy with a store above was added to the inner room (the northern end), and the house was radically reorganised. New principal rooms were provided in a southern crosswing comprising two rooms with projecting end stacks and a stair behind the right (eastern) room in an extension of the original through-passage. Probably at the same time, the rear of the hall was rebuilt in brick, possibly when the original stair was removed.

The building is two storeys throughout. The symmetrical four-window south front dates from around 1850–60. The ground floor has French windows with margin panes and a four-bay glass-roofed verandah supported on timber posts with shaped spandrels. The first floor has horned four-pane sashes, and the wall here is clad with 20th-century asbestos slate. The roof is hipped at each end. The west front has an irregular four-window front of 19th and 20th-century casements. The dairy extension at the left end has only two narrow ventilators. Towards the right end is the front doorway to the passage, containing a 19th-century six-panel door with panelled reveals behind a contemporary gabled and glass-roofed porch. The roof here is lower than the front block and gable-ended to the rear. The most imposing feature of this front is the three projecting stacks with ashlar chimney shafts and weathered offsets. The rear (left-hand) stack has a probably 19th-century royal head fixed to the face.

Interior: The rear block appears to retain intact 16th or 17th-century fabric of the hall, passage and inner room, although much is hidden by 19th-century plaster. Both hall and inner room fireplaces are blocked. The inner room has a three-bay ceiling carried on 17th-century soffit-chamfered and scroll-stopped crossbeams. The rear bay retains early 17th-century ornamental plasterwork: a good single rib ceiling with angle sprays, symbols of the Trinity such as three hares and three fishes, and individual naturalistic motifs such as an owl, a peacock, and a mermaid with comb and mirror. The inner room–hall partition is a 17th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen, its muntins chamfered with scroll stops. In the hall the beams are boxed in with 19th-century plaster. The roof is only partially accessible. Over the inner room, the three-bay roof is carried on A-frame trusses with mortice, tenoned and pegged collars and soffit-chamfered and scroll-stopped purlins. There is a close-studded closed truss partition to the hall where the roofspace is inaccessible. Below the trusses of the three-bay roof are plastered over but appear to be either arch-braced or, more likely, jointed cruck trusses. It is not known whether or not the roof here is smoke-blackened. The front block is entirely 19th-century with moulded plaster cornices and a stick baluster stair with a mahogany handrail. The roof here was not inspected.

The earliest documentary reference to Treasbeare dates to 928, and from the 11th century to 1983 the farm belonged to the Dean and Chapter of Exeter Cathedral. It is well-documented, with surviving wills of several 16th and 17th-century occupants and contemporary surveys. From 1539 it was leased by the Yard family, who later became the Sainthill family and occupied the property into the 19th century.