Dalditch Farmhouse

Dalditch Farmhouse is a former manor house at East Budleigh, now a farmhouse dating from the early or mid 16th century with major improvements made in the later 16th and 17th centuries. It was refurbished in the 19th century and modernised in 1976.

The house is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with walls mended and raised with 19th-century brick. The chimneys are built of stone rubble and brick, topped with 19th and 20th-century brick. The roof is slated. The building is two storeys high and follows a 3-room-and-through-passage plan, facing south-south-east. The inner room is positioned at the right (eastern) end, with its projecting end stack built in 1976. The hall has a front lateral stack, and the service end room has a large end kitchen stack. A fourth room that originally existed at the service end was demolished in 1976. A 2-storey service outshot to the rear of the inner room was probably added in the 17th century and remodelled in the 19th century.

The front elevation is irregular with five windows of late 19th and 20th-century replacement casements with glazing bars. All the windows are different, and some have low segmental arches over them. The front passage doorway contains a late 19th-century panelled and part-glazed door. The roof is gable-ended. At the left end, the lower parts of the cob wall from the demolished fourth room remain on the front with tile coping. The rear outshot includes a fixed pane window containing small rectangular panes of leaded glass. A 19th-century tile-roofed pentice runs across part of the back.

The interior contains several important features. On the hall side of the passage is a late 16th to early 17th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen, with chamfered muntins, though the lower section has been replaced. The original doorway remains to the left with a Tudor-arched head and chamfered surround; the current door is 19th-century.

In the hall at the upper end stands the remains of the original full-height crosswall, a large-framed construction with an oak plank-and-muntin screen at the bottom. This screen is unusual: the headbeam is soffit-chamfered over the panels with masons mitres, though the chamfers do not continue down the edges of the muntins. Instead, they are chamfered with diagonal cut stops at top and bottom, with the lower stops set high enough to accommodate a bench below. A 19th-century doorway has been cut through it and most panels are missing, but one jamb of a shoulder-headed doorway remains. To the right of this doorway were originally five panels, of which the central one survives. It contains a mid 16th-century painting of a saintly figure, probably St. Leonard, depicted cloaked with a halo and left hand raised in a gesture of benefaction. The surrounding timbers are painted with fronds, flowers, strawberries and similar ornaments, with traces of ancient colour continuing up the studs of the framing; the right stud includes a rosette. The fireplace is blocked; the original was probably 16th-century, though as the stack does not project it may have been rebuilt.

The hall was floored in the late 16th to early 17th century with a 4-panel intersecting beam ceiling. The beams around the two panels at the lower end have broad soffit-chamfers, whilst those around the higher-status upper end are richly moulded. The joists are set at right angles to those in the adjoining panels and may originally have been exposed. The ceiling is early, with cob plaster backed on water reeds rather than wooden lathes.

The inner room appears to have been rebuilt in the 17th century at the same time as the outshot. The crossbeam is soffit-chamfered with double bar and scroll stops. The outshot may have originally housed the stairs. The service end also appears to have been rebuilt in the 17th century, with no exposed crossbeam; the fireplace is blocked, though its massive size can be appreciated from a cupboard cut into its side. A blocked oven is present on the left side. The demolished room beyond was late 16th to early 17th-century; a soffit-chamfered and pyramid-stopped crossbeam was removed in 1976.

No early features are visible on the first floor, although some 16th or 17th-century oak framing may be preserved behind later plaster. In the 19th century the walls were raised and a new king post truss roof was erected.

The painted screen is of particular interest as a representation of a saint, likely pre-Reformation in date. In 1381 Bishop Brantyngham authorised the Vicar of Budleigh to officiate in St. Leonard's Chapel at Dalditch, suggesting that the painting might well represent St. Leonard and that the hall could have been used as a chapel. Despite 19th-century alterations, Dalditch remains an interesting 16th and 17th-century farmhouse.