Penspool Cottage

Penspool Cottage is a small farmhouse dating from the late 16th to early 17th century, with alterations from the 18th century and a 20th-century extension. The walls are of plastered cob or stone rubble, with cob stacks topped with 20th-century brick, and a thatched roof to the original house and a tile roof to the extension.

Originally a three-room plan house facing southwest, the house includes a small, unheated inner room at the southeast end, a hall with a projecting front lateral cob stack, and a left-hand room that likely replaces a former through-passage and service room, converted into a parlour in the 18th century with a new stack. The remainder of the house appears to be a single phase construction from the late 16th to early 17th century. The hall was originally floored over.

The exterior has an irregular two-window front with 19th and 20th-century casement windows, including half-dormer windows to the first floor. A third window has been created through the hall stack. A 20th-century door is in the originally passage front doorway, and another 20th-century door is behind a contemporary thatched porch at the right end. The main roof is steeply pitched and half-hipped at both ends.

Inside, the former inner room has plain joists, likely not original. The hall features a chamfered axial beam with pyramid stops, and a plastered fireplace with a chamfered oak lintel, also with pyramid stops. The third room has an 18th-century brick fireplace with a roughly finished oak lintel. Original oak-framed closed trusses are at the ends of the hall. The hall roof spans a single bay between the crosswalls. Penspool Cottage is notable as an early example of a small Devon farmhouse, and contributes to a group of listed buildings near Pencepool Farmhouse.