Burnthouse Farmhouse Including Garden Walls To West And South

OTTERTON OTTERY ROAD SY 08 NE 3/182 Burnthouse Farmhouse including - garden walls to west and south GV II Farmhouse. Probably late C17, modernised in C19. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings; cob of stone rubble stacks topped with C19 brick; thatch roof. 3-room-and-through-passage plan house facing south-south-east, say south. The passage is left (west) of centre and the left end room was the kitchen. The middle room is an unheated lobby with a corridor along the rear; it was probably a dairy. The right end room was the parlour. Both end rooms have end stacks. Probably secondary outshots across the rear. Main house is 2 storeys. 4-window front of similar late C19-early C20 casements with glazing bars, the left 3-window section symmetrically arranged around the front passage doorway which contains a C20 plank door with contemporary half-hipped and thatch roofed porch on rustic posts. Roof is gable-ended to left, hipped to right and carried down continuously over the rear outshots. Interior. Although the C19 modernisation plastered over much of the earlier structural features the original plan is well-preserved. In the left room, the kitchen, an original soffit-chamfered crossbeam is exposed. The fireplace here is blocked by a C19 grate but its massive size is evident. Its oven projects into the room on the right and the cupboard to left might originally have been a walk-in curing chamber. According to the farmer the oven had an external doorway suggesting a bakehouse there once. No carpentry shows in the lobby, the former dairy, and in the right room, the parlour, the crossbeam is boxed in and the fireplace is blocked by a C20 grate. Roofspace was not inspected although the feet of the principals suggest the survival of the original A-frame trusses. Most of the joinery detail is C19 and C20 but some probably earlier plank doors remain hung on strap hinges. Front garden is enclosed by low C19 boundary walls. Built of attractive flint rubble with rounded weathered coping and is interrupted by a number of square piers with pyramidal caps. Similar are used as gate piers. Burnthouse Farmhouse is a relatively small C17 farmhouse with an interesting plan. It appears a single build and its name may suggest that an earlier farmhouse was destroyed by fire.

Listing NGR: SY0896087069