Highley Farmhouse Including Front Garden Walls

Highley Farmhouse, including front garden walls

This is a farmhouse of early 16th-century origin with major improvements dating from the later 16th and 17th centuries, and a late 18th-century kitchen block to the rear. The building is constructed of plastered cob on local stone rubble footings, with stone rubble stacks topped by 19th and 20th-century brick. The roof is slate, replacing earlier thatch.

The house is arranged in an L-plan with the main block facing south-south-east. It follows a 3-room-and-through-passage plan. At the east end is an unheated inner room, formerly the dairy. Adjacent to this is the hall, which contains an axial stack backing onto the passage. At the west end is a room with a gable-end stack, originally a kitchen until the late 18th century, latterly used as a parlour. A single-room kitchen block projects at right angles from the rear of the dairy end, added in the late 18th century.

The original early 16th-century roof structure remains in place and is smoke-blackened, indicating that the house was originally open to the roof throughout, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. In the mid 16th century, the dairy was floored over whilst the open hearth remained in use. The hall stack was inserted in the mid to late 16th century. The passage and service end were floored over and rebuilt in the early to mid 17th century, at which point the service end became a kitchen. The hall was floored over during the same early to mid 17th-century refurbishment.

The farmhouse rises two storeys with secondary outshots across the back. The irregular front elevation has four windows of 20th-century timber casements without glazing bars. The ground floor centre window, serving the hall, has a large segmental arch above it. The passage front doorway is left of centre, containing a 19th-century plank door behind a 20th-century slate-roofed porch. The main roof is half-hipped to the right and gable-ended to the left.

Internally, much historic fabric is covered by 19th and 20th-century plaster. On the lower (former kitchen) side of the passage is an oak plank-and-muntin screen hidden behind plasterboard. It features wide planks and muntins and may be an original low partition screen. The hall, passage and service end (former kitchen) all contain similar early to mid 17th-century crossbeams, which are chamfered with bar run-out stops. The bars have been hacked off the hall crossbeam. The former kitchen fireplace, dating to the early to mid 17th century, remains open, though its cheeks and pentan (back) are papered over. It has a plain chamfered oak lintel, and a blocked oven is suspected in the right cheek. A cupboard to the left may be a former walk-in curing chamber. An old winder stair rises from the rear of the passage on the hall side.

The hall fireplace is blocked, but its large proportions are evident and its panelled Beers stone cheeks can be seen in cupboards either side of the present grate. Above the fireplace is an early to mid 17th-century frieze of ornamental plasterwork featuring a repeated motif of winged creatures. At the upper (dairy) end of the hall is an oak plank-and-muntin screen, exposed at the back in the former dairy where the muntins are unchamfered. The dairy crossbeam is irregular and roughly chamfered.

The main block roof is carried on a series of probably side-pegged jointed crucks, all original and smoke-blackened from the open hearth fire. The bases of the trusses are papered over. The truss over the hall-dairy partition was closed in the mid 16th century whilst the open hearth was still in use; its infill is sooted on the hall side only. The late 18th-century rear block has plain pine crossbeams and a blocked kitchen fireplace. Its roof is carried on A-frame trusses with staggered purlins tusk-tenoned through the principals and with plate yokes.

The front garden is enclosed by a probably 19th-century low stone and flint rubble wall. Highley is a notable multi-phase Devon farmhouse.