Lower Woodhayes Farmhouse

SY 09 NW 5/204

WHIMPLE Lower Woodhayes Farmhouse

II Farmhouse. Early C16 with major later C16 and C17 improvements, renovated in the late C19. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings; brick stacks and chimney-shafts; slate roof, formerly thatch.

Plan and development: three-room-and-through-passage plan house facing south. At the right (east) end is an unheated inner room, originally some kind of service room. Next to it is the hall with an axial stack backing onto the passage. The passage is relatively wide and contains the C19 main staircase. Lower end parlour with a projecting gable-end stack. The early C16 house was apparently open to the roof from end to end, was divided by low partition screens and heated by an open hearth fire. Probably in the mid C16 the inner room and lower ends were floored over and full height crosswalls erected. The open hearth was still in operation then since the hall sides of these crosswalls are smoke-blackened. It seems likely that a hall stack was inserted in the late C16-early C17 but there is no evidence for one that early. The present hall stack is built of brick. It is late C17 and probably associated with the flooring of the hall. It also seems that at this time the inner room and lower end rooms were widened to rear. Maybe the outshots to rear of the hall and passage date from the same time. The lower end stack is of uncertain date. House is two storeys.

Exterior: irregular three-window front of C19 and C20 casements with glazing bars. The passage front doorway is left of centre and it contains a late C19 part-glazed six-panel door behind a contemporary gabled porch; timber-framed on brick footings, ornamental grilles each side and cusped bargeboards. The main roof is gable-ended.

Interior: is largely the result of an apparently superficial late C19 modernisation. Both fireplaces are blocked and no carpentry is exposed in the inner and lower end rooms. A short section of an oak plank-and-muntin screen is exposed on the lower side of the passage. The hall crossbeam has double-ovolo mouldings with runout stops. Three-bay roof is carried on large scantling side-pegged jointed crucks and all the timbers are heavily sooted from the original open hearth fire.

Source: Exeter Museums Archaeological Field Unit archive includes a measured ground plan and long section made in February 1979 by John R L Thorp.

Listing NGR: SY0478796662