Connets Farmhouse Including Outbuilding Adjoining To The South-East And Front Garden Walls

Connets Farmhouse, including adjoining outbuilding to the south-east and front garden walls

A farmhouse dating from the 16th and 17th centuries with some 19th-century alterations. The building is constructed of local stone rubble, partly plastered and partly whitewashed, including some cob, with stone rubble stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brick. The roof is thatched, though the outbuilding section was later re-roofed with corrugated iron.

The house follows a 4-room plan facing north-east. At the north-west end is a parlour with a gable-end stack and a newel stair rising alongside to the front. The two centre rooms are heated by an axial stack between them serving back-to-back fireplaces, with a front lobby entrance onto the side of the stack. At the south-east end is a small unheated room, probably originally a dairy or buttery. The building continues further to the left under the same roof as an agricultural outbuilding with a passageway through it.

The early structural development is difficult to determine, particularly as the roofspace is inaccessible. The house does not conform to the usual layout of its period. Full-height stone rubble walls stand at either end of the central two rooms, suggesting this represents the historic core—probably an open hall house of early or mid-16th-century date, possibly heated by an open hearth fire. The two fireplaces of the axial stack are later, likely early to mid-17th century, though it remains unclear which is the later of the two. The right-end parlour was added in the early or mid-17th century, as was probably the left-end room and the outbuilding, though this end has been rearranged since.

The house is two storeys. The exterior features an irregular 5-window front with various 19th and 20th-century casements. Most are earlier and oak-framed, with a couple possibly dating to the 18th century, containing rectangular panes of leaded glass. The central doorway contains a 19th-century plank door behind a 20th-century gabled porch. To the left of the house, the outbuilding passage front doorway is a segmental-headed arch. The main roof is gable-ended to the right, continuous over the outbuilding, and hipped to the left. There are no rear windows.

The interior contains scattered 16th and 17th-century carpentry detail throughout, though not enough to establish a full historical development. The two leftmost rooms have no exposed beams and are separated by a full-height stone rubble crosswall. The inner fireplace is partly blocked but its chamfered oak lintel is exposed. The room to the right of centre, the dining room/hall, has a blocked fireplace of considerable size. The ceiling beams over this room are difficult to interpret: there is a roughly-finished crossbeam, probably 18th century, and in the outer bay an axial beam with deep hollow chamfers and pyramid stops of late 16th-century date (possibly reset). The parlour has chamfered and step-stopped crossbeams and a blocked fireplace. The roof over the centre two rooms and parlour is carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses, though the roofspace is inaccessible. The parlour roof appears later, with trusses set slightly higher than those over the centre of the house. The roof over the left-end room and outbuilding is carried on 18th or 19th-century A-frame trusses.

A front garden is enclosed by a probably 19th-century stone rubble wall. Although Connets is situated in the middle of Dunkeswell Village and surrounded by housing, it remains a working farm. It forms part of a group with other traditional thatch-roofed buildings in the vicinity of the Church of St Nicholas.