The Old Bakery

The Old Bakery

A house occupying part of a larger original dwelling, sited on Station Road in Newton Poppleford. The building dates from the early 16th century with major improvements made in the 17th century. The original house was probably subdivided in the late 18th or early 19th century, with the western rooms now forming the separate Ham Cottage. The structure is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with part of the rear wall faced in late 17th or early 18th-century brick. The chimney stacks are topped with 19th and 20th-century brick, and the roof is thatch.

The house stands set back from the road on a raised site, facing north. It corresponds to the hall, passage and service end room of the original 3 or 4-room-and-through-passage plan. The passage has been blocked to the rear and now exists as a small entrance lobby, with the present kitchen occupying the rear of the passage and extending into the service end room.

The external front is of 2 storeys with an irregular 3-window composition of late 19th or early 20th-century casements with glazing bars. A small bay window projects to the left of centre with a monopitch roof. The hall features a prominent projecting front lateral stack with an ashlar chimney shaft showing weathered offsets. The window bay immediately to the right is brought forward flush with the stack front as an oriel. Between the bay window and the hall stack is the front passage doorway containing a 20th-century part-glazed door. Just below the chimney shaft is a moulded plaster plaque comprising a simple lozenge-shaped frame surmounted by a fleur-de-lys motif, uninscribed and probably dating to the 17th century. The left end of the roof is hipped and continues with that of adjoining Ham Cottage.

The interior reveals the hall as the oldest part, dating from the early 16th century. A small section of the original passage-hall plank-and-muntin screen is exposed on the reverse hall side with unmoulded muntins. The front end contains an internal window with rectangular panes of thin ancient leaded glass. The lower passage screen is largely plastered over but survives as a full-height crosswall, with its framing visible in the roofspace. At the apex, a small collar holds the tops of the principals either side of the diagonally set ridge, representing Alcock's apex type L1. The hall roofspace shows evidence of smoke-blackening from an open hearth, indicating the hall was open to the roof. The hall roof comprises 2 bays and appears intact, though the open truss is completely boxed in by a 20th-century partition. The upper end closed truss is exposed on the Ham Cottage side and is a face-pegged jointed cruck.

Late 17th-century oak 3-light window frames occupy the rear of the hall on each floor, both with flat-faced mullions; the upper frame retains leaded glass. The hall contains a large stone fireplace with a soffit-chamfered oak lintel, probably built in the late 16th or early 17th century. A tiny fire window stands on the right side, with a similar small light in the outer edge of the oriel bay. The hall was floored in the mid-17th century with an axial beam displaying a broad soffit chamfer and double-bar scroll stops.

The service end was rebuilt in the late 17th or early 18th century with a reused roughly-finished axial beam and a similarly finished fireplace lintel. The rough roof truss is an A-frame with a pegged lap-jointed collar.

This building forms part of a high-quality late Medieval house and creates an attractive group with Ham Cottage and the Sheiling.