Mountstephens Farmhouse Including Outbuildings Adjoining To North-West

Mountstephens Farmhouse Including Outbuildings Adjoining to North-West

This farmhouse began in the 17th century, was enlarged and substantially rebuilt in the mid to late 18th century, received a new front block and rear outbuildings in the 19th century, and was modernised in 1987. It is constructed of local stone and flint rubble, with the front plastered and lightly incised as ashlar; the roof is now concrete tile, formerly thatch, with stone rubble stacks and stone rubble chimneyshafts.

The house is planned on an L-shape. The main block faces south-west and contains a three-room-and-through-passage plan. At the north-east end is a parlour with a gable-end stack and a winder stair alongside. On the other side of the passage is the dining room, enlarged by removing the passage partition on that side. The dining room has a large axial stack backing onto the kitchen at the south-west end, which has a projecting rear lateral stack. An unheated single-room service wing, now used as the kitchen, projects at right angles in front of the former kitchen. Evidence suggests the original 17th-century house occupied only the parlour and dining room with a two-room plan; the dining room then served as the kitchen. In the 18th century a new kitchen was built; in the 19th century the service wing was added. The house is two storeys.

The exterior of the main block has a symmetrical three-window front of 19th and 20th-century casements, the latest being iron-framed without glazing bars, arranged around the former passage front doorway which now contains 20th-century double doors behind a contemporary glass-walled porch. The main roof is gable-ended to the right and hipped to the left. The gable-end of the service wing contains an introduced 19th-century French window. The rear of the main block includes older windows, one containing rectangular panes of leaded glass. The former passage rear doorway has a 19th-century porch with cusped bargeboards and contains a six-panel door.

The parlour at the right end has a stone fireplace with a reused chamfered oak lintel and an 18th-century cupboard with fielded panel doors on H-L hinges. The central dining room has a large fireplace from the 17th-century kitchen, constructed of stone with a plain oak lintel; the back shows blocked openings of a disused oven, curing chamber, and ash pit. The left end room, the 18th-century kitchen, has a stone fireplace with a chamfered oak lintel and a large oven housing with remains of a walk-in curing chamber projecting to the rear. This room retains a 17th-century chamfered and step-stopped crossbeam, presumably reused. The roof over the main block is 18th-century and employs unusually sophisticated carpentry for its time, carried on tie beam trusses with pegged and spiked lap-jointed collars, staggered butt purlins with tusk tenons, and bearing carpenter's assembly marks. The service wing has plain 19th-century carpentry.

A 19th-century gable-ended dairy with cheese loft is connected to the back of the kitchen by a single-storey outshot. The cheeseloft is reached by an external flight of stone steps in the rear end wall.