Pavers Farmhouse Including Garden Walls To South And East

Pavers Farmhouse, including garden walls to south and east

Farmhouse with origins in the late 15th to early 16th century, with major 16th and 17th century improvements, modernised in the late 19th century and with one end rebuilt around 1980. The building is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble chimney stacks incorporating 19th and 20th century brick shafts, one retaining 19th century chimney pots. The roof is thatched.

The house follows a 3-room-and-through-passage plan, facing south. The service end room at the western end survives only partially, having been rebuilt shorter than the original around 1980. The plan layout reflects a 17th century modernisation and represents an interesting variation on the typical farmhouse arrangement. The house is unusually wide with shallow service rooms positioned behind the main rooms. The present main stair dates to the 19th century and rises from the rear of the passage behind the hall. The 17th century stair is housed in a turret projecting from the rear of the shallow service room. The room finishes suggest that the inner room functioned as the kitchen in the 17th century, with the service end room serving as a parlour. The inner room has an end stack and the hall has a projecting front lateral stack.

The building is two storeys with an irregular 5-window front comprising a variety of 19th and 20th century casement windows of differing types and sizes, their glazing bars original. First-floor windows rise only a short distance into the thatch eaves. The front passage doorway, positioned near the left end, is fitted with a late 19th century part-glazed and panelled door. The hall stack is whitewashed, built of stone rubble with large dressed quoins; its upper portion is rebuilt in brick with slate offsets and a very tall brick chimney shaft. The roof is gable-ended to the left and half-hipped to the right.

The interior preserves significant structural history and much original medieval and early modern fabric beneath 19th century plaster. The oldest feature is the late 15th to early 16th century roof over the hall and passage. The lower parts of the principals are plastered over but their curving shape indicates a form of cruck construction. All collars have been removed, leaving unusually long mortices, though a small surviving fragment shows the underside shaped to form an ogee or four-centred arch. At the apex, the principals are held by a yoke either side of a large square-set ridge (Alcock's apex type H), with one truss representing a variant where the yoke continues over the top of one principal saddle-fashion. The roof is thoroughly smoke-blackened, indicating the medieval house was open to the roof, heated by an open hearth fire and probably divided by low partitions.

Evidence from the roof space indicates the inner room was floored over probably in the mid-16th century, around the same time the upper hall truss was filled. The infill is sooted on the hall side only. The inner room end was rebuilt or enlarged probably in the late 16th to early 17th century, where the 3-bay roof comprises two probably jointed cruck trusses with mortise-and-tenoned collars and is notably clean, indicating early enclosure.

Most ground-floor features are early or mid-18th century. The inner room contains two crossbeams, one boxed in and one with a plain soffit chamfer. The shallow service room behind has a soffit-chamfered and straight-cut stopped crossbeam. The hall has a 3-bay ceiling with soffit-chamfered crossbeams featuring double bar-scroll stops. The surviving part of the service end room retains the remains of two axial beams identical to those in the hall, indicating this room was originally full width; the quality of the stops denotes a room of high status, presumably the parlour. Fireplaces are blocked by 19th century grates and partitions are plastered over. Most joinery detail is 19th century.

The front garden is enclosed by low 19th century garden walls built of flint rubble with rustic coping and square gate piers on each side.

Pavers is an attractive and well-preserved multi-phase Devon farmhouse with an interesting 17th century plan form. It stands notably close to Passaford Farmhouse, another major farmhouse located just across the lane.