Upcott Barton Farmhouse Including Adjoining Front Garden Walls And Gate-Piers To North-West And South-West

Upcott Barton Farmhouse, including adjoining front garden walls and gate-piers to north-west and south-west

This is a farmhouse and former manor house of early 16th-century date, substantially improved in the later 16th and 17th centuries. It is built of snecked volcanic stone, tending towards random rubble in places, with exposed volcanic stone stacks (the rear two topped with 19th and 20th-century brick). The roof is covered with coated slate.

The house follows a 3-room-and-through-passage plan, facing south-west with a service room at the south-east end. In the early 17th century the left end was extended to accommodate a dog-leg stair between the hall and inner room, and a gable-ended rear block was probably added behind the stair at the same time. The main block is gable-ended with the roof stepping down to the service room. The service room is two storeys; the passage, hall and inner room are two storeys with attics in the roof space.

The service end of the front was apparently much rebuilt in the late 19th century and contains three ground floor and one first floor windows of that date. The passage door lies immediately to the left and has an early 16th-century volcanic stone arch with almost rounded profile and ogee-ovolo moulding with roll stops (part of the arch has been replaced by a section of chamfered oak). The door itself is probably a 19th-century replacement. The slate-roofed and gabled porch is a 20th-century rebuild of the 17th-century original but incorporates the richly carved crank-headed fascia of the original and a carved post. A photograph of the original by A W Everett is held in the West Country Studies Library.

The hall, stair and inner room have a regular but not entirely symmetrical 4-window frontage of early 17th-century fenestration of unusually high quality. A stone stripmould runs at first floor level across the top of the ground floor windows. The hall has a pair of 3-light windows, the stair compartment a 2-light window, and the inner room a 4-light window with central King mullion. The first floor fenestration is symmetrical, with 4-light mullion-and-central-transom windows either side of a pair of 3-light mullion-and-upper-transom Ipswich-style windows (the upper of the wide central light having a semi-circular moulded oak rib with keystone). All mullions have external ogee moulds and internal ovolos and include iron casements (many replaced circa 1980) with small panes of leaded glass, including patterned sections in the Ipswich windows and much surviving green-tinged early glass. The left end gable has a similar 3-light window at first floor level, and towards the right corner is a reset fragment of a plain capital of a half-engaged column found this century in buried foundations close to this end.

The rear includes 19th-century casements. The rear passage door has a segmental head and a late 17th-century solid bead-moulded oak frame, including a probably contemporary plank door with internal plain strap hinges. There is a projecting service room and kitchen stack, and a projecting wing with 19th-century casements.

Interior

The earliest structure survives at the service end, which has a 4-bay arch-braced roof probably supported on jointed crucks. The lower passage screen is rubble-built towards the rear but includes an early 17th-century 3-door oak screen. The rear door (central to the passage) is a flat-arched door to the kitchen, which has plain chamfered crossbeams and a large blocked fireplace. The front doorway to a service lobby has a chamfered surround with scroll stops and a plank-and-ledge door with 12-panel front. The central door is a late 17th-century door with two long upright panels, opening to a straight flight service stair with turned balusters (a smaller version of the main stair). From the landing a 16th-century oak doorway opens to an end chamber which has a late 17th-century coved plaster ceiling over the arch-braced roof and a moulded plaster cornice.

The hall, stair and inner room appear to have been rebuilt in the early 17th century with some late 17th-century improvements. There is a late 17th-century bolection panelled screen from passage to hall. The hall is otherwise lined with early 17th-century small-field oak panelling, some of which has been reset. The fireplace is boarded but is said to be Beer stone with a flat-arched head and enriched spandrels. The doorframe from hall to stair is richly moulded oak with ornate urn stops identical to another from the stairs to the rear block.

The main staircase is a very fine early 17th-century oak dog-leg stair with square newel posts (the lower one enriched with sunken panels) and ornate shaped caps, closed string and unmoulded flat handrail, both with modillion cornices, and heavy turned balusters. The panelled dog gate with top grille of turned uprights may be contemporary. A late 17th-century 2-fielded panel door with bolection architrave and H-L hinges opens from the stair to the inner room or parlour.

The inner room or parlour was refurbished with high-quality work in the late 17th century. It is lined with bolection panelling with dado and box cornice. The wide panel over the fireplace features an original landscape painting, although the left side has been overpainted in the late 18th century to include a gentleman depicted as the artist. The ornamental plaster ceiling is a late example of a hollow-rib ceiling with a geometric pattern around a central pendant and with moulded plaster sprays and arabesques made up of foliage, fruits and flowers, together with symbols of the Holy Trinity such as the three fishes and three hares.

Both the parlour and hall chambers have late 17th-century bolection chimney pieces and contemporary ornamental plaster ceilings. The parlour ceiling has a moulded cornice and the remains of a bay leaf roundel containing rosettes interrupted by cherubs' heads and encircling a Tudor rose. The hall chamber ceiling has a bolection rib design with a central rosette.

The early 17th-century roof has 9 bays with A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars. The attic over the parlour has a small early 17th-century stone fireplace with oak lintel and rebated ogee surround. Attic partitions include early and late 17th-century joinery including a plank door with applied 9-panel front and strap hinges with fleur de lys terminals.

Courtyard walls and gate-piers

The front courtyard is enclosed by high walls. From the left (north-west) end of the house a plastered cob wall with corrugated asbestos pitched coping extends north-westwards and returns forward in 18th-century brick including a pair of large square-section gate-piers with soffit-moulded volcanic stone caps. From the right (south-east) end a similar 18th-century brick wall extends forward and includes a pair of identical gate-piers.

Historical Context

Upcott Barton is a very important house because of the extent and quality of the surviving 16th and 17th-century work. In the 15th century the manor belonged to Nicholas Radford, a lawyer, Member of Parliament and Recorder of Exeter, who was murdered here in 1455 by a mob led by Thomas Courtenay, son of the Earl of Devon. Thomas Westcote, in his Views of Devonshire, records the Prowse family succeeding the Radfords and ironically being followed in the 16th century by a younger branch of the Courtenays. In the late 17th century the property passed through the female line to John Moore of Moore, near Tavistock. Several members of these families are buried in the north chapel of the parish church of St. Matthew, which includes a very fine mural monument to John Moore (died 1691).