Eppitts

SY 19 SE SOUTHLEIGH

5/127 Eppitts -

• II Farmhouse. Early - mid C16 with major later C16 and C17 improvements, thoroughly renovated circa 1970. Plastered local stone and flint rubble including sections of cob; the hall stack is Beerstone ashlar with an ashlar chimneyshaft, the others are stone rubble stacks topped with C20 brick; corrugated iron roof, formerly thatch. Plan and development: originally this was a 3-room-and-through-passage plan house but now the front passage doorway is block. The house is built on a gentle hillslope facing west-south-west, say west. Uphill at the left (north) end is the former inner room, the present kitchen, with a gable-end stack. Next to it is the hall with projecting rear lateral stack. At the right (south) end is the service end room with a gable-end stack; this was formerly the kitchen. Although the roof timbers are clean the owner reports finding heavily sooted walls during renovation work indicating that the original house was open to the roof, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. The lower passage screen might be an original low partition. The hall stack was inserted in the mid- late C16 and the kitchen stack is probably late C16 - early C17. The house was progressively floored over from the mid C16 - early C17. The roof appears to be a replacement of the original; it is probably late C16 - early C17. The inner room stack is a C20 insertion. Also in the C20 the passage front doorway was blocked and a new front doorway inserted into the inner room. House is 2 storeys. Exterior: irregular 4-window front of circa 1970 casements without glazing bars. The present front doorway is at the left end and contains a C20 door behind a contemporary porch. The roof is gable-ended. Similar C20 windows to rear. Interior: the inner room has a circa 1970 replacement crossbeam and contemporary spiral staircase. In the hall the 2 richly-moulded axial beams remain from 2 late C16 - early C17 9-panel intersecting beam ceiling. The crosspieces have been removed. The fireplace here has a chamfered oak lintel with a mantelshelf carved out of the solid and its coved soffit enriched with a series of carved fourleaf motifs. This attractive feature is a very rare survival. The lower (service room side) passage partition is a possibly original oak plank-and-muntin screen which includes a shoulder-headed doorway. No beam in the former kitchen but the fireplace here is stone rubbble with a plain-chamfered oak lintel and it includes an oven and the large cupboard entered through the right-hand cheek is probably a former walk-in curing chamber. The roof is carried on a series of clean side-pegged jointed cruck trusses.

Listing NGR: SY1950293150