The Yarcombe Inn

The Yarcombe Inn is a public house, formerly a coaching inn, situated on a site that may incorporate fragments of a former church house. The building appears to date primarily to the 18th and 19th centuries, with 20th-century modernization, although evidence of earlier fabric suggests parts may originate from the 17th century.

The inn is constructed of plastered local stone and flint rubble, possibly including some cob. The rear elevations reveal exposed masonry. Stone rubble and brick stacks rise through plastered brick chimney shafts, and the main section of the inn has a thatched roof, while a later coach house and stables extension is roofed with slate.

The building follows a long plan, running west-northwest, and is built down a hillslope alongside the churchyard. The main inn block, located uphill at the left (north) end, comprises three rooms. The left room has a gable-end stack, with a stair leading to the central room. The central room has an axial stack backing onto the right room, which has a rear lateral stack. A single-room rear block projects at right angles to the right of the center and features a gable-end stack. This rear section has been heavily modernized in the 20th century, obscuring its original development. A 19th-century coach house and stables, aligned on the same axis as the inn, has been brought into domestic use. The inn and former coach house/stables are two storeys high with single-story outshots to the rear and a 20th-century garage extension on the north end.

The front elevation is irregular, with three windows containing 20th-century casements with leaded glass panes. Two curving bay windows with thatched roofs are incorporated into the inn’s front section. The doorways to the inn have 20th-century doors in a traditional style. An external stone staircase leads to a first-floor doorway at the right end of the coach house/stables. The roof is gable-ended, stepping down with the slope of the land.

The exposed rear wall of the inn (at the north end) reveals breaks and blockings, including limestone ashlar blocks and a redundant ashlar drip ledge, which are the only apparent indications of pre-18th-century work. The interior has been extensively modernized in the 20th century, and most features are from the 19th and 20th centuries. The northernmost room has blocked-in rolled steel joists (RSJs). The roof, potentially dating to the 18th century, consists of a series of A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars and X-apexes.

The Yarcombe Inn is a historically significant building in the village and forms part of a group of listed buildings near the Church of St John. Local lore suggests it may incorporate remains from the Guest House of Otterton Priory, although no evidence supports this claim.