Pear Tree Cottage

PAYHEMBURY LOWER TALE ST 00 SE 3/98 Pear Tree Cottage - - II

Cottage. Early - mid C18 enlarged circa 1980. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings, partly patched with brick; timber-framed and cob stack topped with C20 brick; thatch roof. Plan: 3-room plan cottage facing south-west. The right room section is a circa 1975 extension. The other 2 rooms make up the C18 house; a larger living room to left heated by a gable-end stack with a winder stair rising alongside. The small unheated room was a service room, probably a dairy or buttery. There is evidence of a former smoking chamber to rear (see below). 2 storeys with C20 service extension to rear. Exterior: 3-window front of C20 casements with glazing bars. The front doorway is left of centre and contains an old plank door behind a C20 porch. The roof is half- hipped. Interior: the rooms of the old house have plain carpentry detail. The fireplace is stone rubble and C19 brick. It has an oak-framed front with bead-moulded surround, the same moulding on the frame of an early cupboard in the rear wall. Alongside to left an oak steep winder stair rises round the back of round-headed cupboard alcove. Even though the roof structure was replaced circa 1980 the joinery of the main room survives very well; rustic and simple, a good example of an early cottage interior. In 1983 the stack was exposed. A brief note made then reports that it is cob and timber-framed and that a second timber-framed flue was inserted through its rear side from a small brick room there, presumably a smoking chamber. This is a very late example of a timber-framed chimneystack. Source: Devon SMR worksheet by D. M. Griffiths, July 1983.

Listing NGR: ST0664301704