East Leigh Barton

East Leigh Barton is a farmhouse of exceptional architectural and historical interest. The building probably dates to the late 14th or early 15th century, with major improvements in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is constructed of plastered cob on rubble footings, with stone rubble and cob chimney stacks topped with 19th and 20th century brick. The roof is thatch.

The house is a 3-room-and-through-passage plan building facing south-east, with an inner room at the north-east end. The rear passage door is now blocked. The plan incorporates an end stack in the inner room, an axial stack in the hall backing onto the passage, and a front lateral stack serving the end room. The building is two storeys, with 19th and 20th century outshots to the rear. The front elevation is irregular with five windows of late 19th and 20th century casements, all but two with glazing bars. The front passage doorway, positioned left of centre, now contains a 20th century door set behind a contemporary porch with a monopitch roof of corrugated plastic. The roof is gable-ended to the left and hipped to the right.

The interior shows mainly the results of 19th and 20th century modernisation. No beams are exposed and the fireplaces are blocked by 20th century grates. However, the survival of the late medieval layout indicates that many 16th and 17th century or earlier features may survive beneath later plaster. A 17th century oak plank-and-muntin screen with chamfered and scroll-stopped muntins is visible on the hall side of the rear passage, behind the cob chimney stack. Another section of oak plank-and-muntin screen, probably 16th century with chamfered and step-stopped muntins, has been reset to partition the service room. At the upper end of the hall, a wide gap has been cut through the timber-framed wall into the inner room. The exposed soffit of a rail shows mortises for close-set studs, suggesting that the crosswall dates to the late 16th or early 17th century.

The roof is of considerable interest and is accessible. The roof over the inner room, hall and passage is original and probably late 14th or early 15th century work. It is virtually intact and most impressive, comprising three trusses of true cruck construction of enormous scantling. The principals are squared tree trunks approximately 400–450 millimetres square, and in places bend following the grain of the original trees. All trusses have cambered collars with soffit chamfers and central bosses comprising simple cylinder shapes with flat soffits. They are mortised, tenoned and pegged to the principals, which reduce in width above. The two trusses over the hall and passage have yokes to carry the massive square-set ridge (Alcock's apex type H), whilst the truss over the hall–inner room partition has a large saddle (Alcock's apex type C). At the inner room end, the ridge is still carried on the original hip cruck with a curving brace between the junction of the two pieces. Only one set of trenched purlins appears, although a second set may exist at wall plate level. The entire roof, including the original common rafters and the underside of rye thatch, is heavily smoke-blackened, indicating that the original house was open to the roof, heated by an open hearth fire, and divided by low partitions.

Most remarkably, the original smoke louvre survives in situ and virtually complete. It is built on top of the ridge over the hall, approximately one metre long and rising approximately 0.4 metres. It is gable-ended on the same axis as the main roof. The ends are made of oak boards with edges fashioned to accommodate a pitched roof of louvered boards, most of which survive. Its survival is due to the insertion of the hall stack alongside, after which the thatch was simply carried over the top of the louvre to the chimney shaft. Over the service end is a 17th century roof truss; the lower parts of the principals are now boxed into a first floor partition, but the collar is pegged and lap-jointed with dovetail halvings.

East Leigh Barton is a well-preserved late medieval farmhouse with an impressive and unusual roof of exceptional scantling. The only other example of similar construction and scantling known in Devon is at Lower Chimsworthy, Bratton Clovelly. The surviving smoke louvre is the most important feature and may well be a unique survival.