Fordton Farmhouse

Fordton Farmhouse is a small former farmhouse on the west side of Whimple Green, dating from the early 16th century with major improvements in the later 16th and 17th centuries, and modernised around 1981. It is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble and cob stacks topped with 19th-century brick, and a thatch roof.

The house follows a three-room-and-through-passage plan facing south-south-east. At the east end is an inner room parlour with a projecting gable-end stack. Next to it is the hall with a projecting front lateral stack. At the west end is a narrow unheated service room, now used as a kitchen. The original house had the same size and plan but was open to the roof from end to end, divided by low partition screens and heated by an open hearth fire. Around the mid-16th century, the inner room was floored with the chamber jettying into the open hall. The lower end was presumably floored by circa 1600. The hall stack was inserted in the early to mid-17th century and the hall floored over around the same time or slightly later. In the late 17th century, the inner room end was rebuilt as a parlour with a master chamber over and given a new stack. The winder stair in the hall probably dates from the same period. Rear outshots include a mid to late 17th-century bakehouse with the remains of a stack. The house is two storeys with secondary outshots to the rear.

The irregular three-window front features circa 1981 uPVC casements with leaded diamond pane effect. The passage front doorway is left of centre and contains a late 19th-century six-panel door behind a contemporary gabled porch with wavy bargeboards and trellis sides. The main roof is half-hipped to the right and gable-ended to the left.

Internally, the former kitchen service end room has no exposed carpentry detail, and the lower side passage screen is 20th-century, made up from pieces of old timber. The upper passage screen is probably an original low partition screen—an oak plank-and-muntin screen with an unusual sequence of carpenter's assembly marks; it is much restored and the planks have been removed. In the former hall, at the upper end, is another oak plank-and-muntin screen. Its muntins are chamfered with cut diagonal stops high enough to accommodate a bench below. This screen is probably mid-16th century and associated with the flooring over of the inner room; it includes two doorways, the left one blocked with boards in the late 17th century, presumably a stair door. The hall fireplace is stone rubble, much patched with 19th-century brick, and its oak lintel is ovolo-moulded with scroll stops. The hall crossbeam has double ovolo-mouldings with run-out stops. The oak-framed winder stair is probably late 17th-century.

The features of the inner room parlour end are all late 17th-century. The parlour axial beam is roughly chamfered. The fireplace is limestone with a curving brick pentan (back) and plain oak lintel. Alongside to the right is a cupboard with fielded panel doors. In the chamber above is a small fireplace, possibly original. Alongside to the right is a blocked late 17th-century window of two lights with a flat-faced mullion. The doorway contains a two-fielded panel door. A plank door in the service end is hung on mid-17th-century ornamental wrought iron strap hinges.

The roof is mostly original. It comprises two long bays with a central side-pegged jointed cruck truss of large scantling. There is a hip cruck at the service end. There is a mortise at the inner end of the ridge for another hip cruck, but the roof at this end was altered when the end stack was built; another side-pegged jointed cruck was erected there. This late 17th-century truss is clean, but the rest of the structure, including a complete set of common rafters, battens, and the underside of the thatch at the front, are heavily smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire.

Fordton is a very well-preserved and unusually small example of a late medieval farmhouse. Before the 1981 modernisation, the Exeter Museums Archaeological Field Unit recorded additional interesting features that no longer remain. There was a plank door to the cupboard under the hall stair inscribed RN 1745. More significantly, there was an original oak window in the back wall of the hall, blocked by the hall first floor structure but surviving virtually intact. It was unglazed, of four lights with chamfered mullions and trefoil heads cut into the headbeam, with a two-tier effect created by a board with trefoil heads applied across the inside face.