Broad Oak Farmhouse Including Stables Adjoining To West

Broad Oak Farmhouse with adjoining stables to the west is a grade II listed building.

This is a farmhouse built in the mid-16th century and substantially improved in the late 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries. It was modernised with a new parlour wing in the early or mid-19th century, and underwent further modernisation in 1987. The building is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble and brick stacks topped with plastered 19th-century brick chimneyshafts. The roof is slate.

The farmhouse is arranged as a long main block facing north, built down a gentle hillslope, containing five rooms. At the uphill (east) end stands a parlour with an end stack, alongside a second parlour in a single-room projecting wing heated by an outer side lateral stack. These are separated by an axial passage. The next room is the dining room with an axial stack backing onto the entrance hall, which contains the main stair. To the right of the entrance hall is the kitchen with its own axial stack backing onto an unheated former dairy or buttery at the right (west) end.

This layout reflects the early or mid-19th century refurbishment of an earlier house. The original structure had a three-room-and-through-passage plan. The original full-height jettied crosswall at the upper end of the hall suggests that the inner room was floored from the beginning, while the hall and possibly the service end were originally open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. A hall fireplace was inserted in the late 16th or early 17th century, and the former passage and service end were probably floored over at the same time. The hall itself was floored in the early to mid-17th century. The present dining room is a mid-17th century parlour extension, marking when the hall was relegated to a kitchen function. The main block parlour may be a late 17th or early 18th-century extension but was thoroughly modernised in the 19th century when the second parlour was built.

The building is two storeys high. The front elevation is irregular with four windows across. The front of the parlour wing contains 19th-century 16-pane sashes, with others on the inner side. The main block includes a couple of 16-pane sashes—one on the ground floor left and another on the first floor right. The centre two first-floor windows have been replaced with 4-pane sashes, and the left first-floor window is blind. The ground floor right window is a 20th-century casement with glazing bars. The front doorway contains a 19th-century part-glazed six-panel door behind a contemporary flat-roofed porch on Tuscan columns with a moulded entablature. The eaves are carried on pairs of shaped brackets, and the roof is gable-ended to both the main block and parlour wing. The rear wall has three 12-pane sash windows.

The interior contains work from all major building phases. The dairy or buttery (former service room and passage) has a plain chamfered crossbeam and a lower passage partition, now plastered over. The hall features a large fireplace, partly blocked, with a chamfered oak lintel visible. At the upper end, the jetty is supported by curving posts set in the side walls, with a chamfered crossbeam with step stops. The former inner room now contains a 19th-century staircase. The dining room (17th-century parlour) has a blocked fireplace covered by a 19th-century chimneypiece, but the original crossbeams are exposed and richly moulded with scroll stops. The main block parlour shows only 19th-century features, including an Adam-style chimneypiece, except for a late 17th or early 18th-century cupboard in the passage with its original panelled top tier of doors. Apart from this and a couple of contemporary two-panel doors, the joinery is 19th century. The roof was raised in the 19th century and is carried on a series of 19th-century king post trusses. However, the jettied crosswall is visible in the roofspace, though its apex has been cut off. It is a closed truss, clean on the inner room side but smoke-blackened on the hall side from the original open hearth fire.

An 18th or 19th-century stable block is built onto the right (west) end of the house. Constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings with a slate roof, it has two windows on the front and two doorways to the rear, with a loading hatch to the hayloft in the right gable-end. It has plain carpentry detail and was re-roofed in the 19th century.

This is a significant multi-phase Devon farmhouse containing good quality work from all its building periods. Although more 16th and 17th-century carpentry is likely hidden within the structure, the early to mid-19th-century modernisation was crucial to the house's development, and its features deserve careful respect.