Dunsmore Farmhouse

Dunsmore Farmhouse, Silverton

This is a farmhouse of early 16th-century origin, significantly altered and extended in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The building is constructed of stone, plastered, with gabled-end slate roofs.

The complex building history can be traced as follows. The earliest phase was a conventional medieval three-room, through-passage plan with the higher end positioned to the left of the passage. The service end has been demolished. The medieval hall roof, smoke-blackened and of jointed cruck construction, originally remained open but received a false ceiling inserted well into the 20th century to form the present ground-floor living room. The through-passage survives, with its lower end wall now forming the present end wall. The lower end roof truss abuts the gable wall and carries purlins that evidently extended beyond into another bay, but which have been sawn off.

The late 16th and early 17th-century phase involved a rebuilding or higher-end extension comprising two cross-wings. Wing A extends to the rear, while wing B projects forward and contains the principal rooms. An external front lateral stack, separately gabled, heats the medieval hall. External lateral stacks heat both wings A and B. An internal end stack heats the rear rooms of wing B. All stacks have brick shafts.

Exterior

The roof ridge of the old range sits at a much lower level than the later work. The front elevation of the hall shows no first-floor windows and only one 6-light ovolo-moulded window to the left of the lateral stack. The entrance to the through-passage is positioned at the extreme right-hand side. Cross-wing A to the left is gabled and flush with the old range, containing the present front entrance under a canopy on shaped brackets, and one 3-light ovolo-moulded window to all floors. The inner face of projecting cross-wing B at the extreme left has one 5-light ovolo-moulded window to the ground and first floors, both with hood moulds. The front of wing B is flanked by buttresses, each with three set-offs, and displays a 5-light ovolo-moulded window to the ground and first floors (both with hood moulds) and a 3-light ovolo-moulded window to the attic.

The left-hand side elevation of cross-wing A has a lean-to with a 3-light ovolo-moulded window above lighting the main chamber. The rear elevation of cross-wing B features a 1:5:1 light bay window of 19th or 20th-century date and a 3-light window with a single-light window above. This face is sharply recessed at its junction with cross-wing B, possibly marking the point of a former stair turret at the end of the earlier main range. This recessed plane has one 2-light ground-floor window and a tiny opening above.

The outer (east) face of cross-wing A contains 2, 3, and 4-light 19th-century casement windows. The rear end of cross-wing B is buttressed and has a 3-light ovolo-moulded window to the first floor and an attic window, each with transom, the former larger and largely renewed. The inner (west) face of cross-wing A has one 3-light ovolo-moulded window to the first floor and a 5-light 19th-century casement window below.

The rear of the original hall range has one blocked door and a porch in the angle formed by the wing. A large 3-light window with transom, ovolo-moulded, is opposed by a passage door. The right-hand end provides access to the first floor (an unfloored loft) only.

Interior

The old hall is spanned by four lightly smoke-blackened upper crucks (possibly jointed) with cranked collars, two pairs of trenched purlins, a diagonal ridge-piece, and retains some original rafters. All crucks are secured with wooden pegs, except for the smoke-blackened slatting that closes the truss at the upper end of the hall, which is affixed by large iron nails. The fireplace has simple chamfered jambs, now altered. A blocked doorway, arched and chamfered, gives in from an inner room, perhaps a solar, to the upper part of the higher end of the hall, and this could possibly have been the site of a gallery, as the hall never received an early first floor.

Cross-wing B (the main reception and bedrooms) contains two principal ground-floor rooms. The front room has windows with internal ovolo mouldings; the north-facing window has composite ovolo and cavetto moulding with fillet. Four cross-beams display composite ovolo and cavetto moulding with unusual knob-stops. The fireplace has cyma-reversa moulding to stone jambs and a timber lintel, with a back oven. The rear room has one deeply chamfered cross-beam with hollow step-stop with bar.

The chamber above the front room is the master bedroom and retains its intact late 16th and early 17th-century decorative scheme. The plaster ceiling comprises a single ribbed mesh with squares, spades, semi-circles, thistles, roses, and other floral motifs, with a cornice decorated with faces and cornucopias. Panelling rises four squares in height with an added tier of rectangles running below the plaster cornice. The fire surround has composite ovolo and cyma-recta moulded stone jambs and a wooden lintel, with the jambs having elaborate bulbous bases. The chimneypiece is flanked by fluted pilasters rising the full height of the room, with an overmantle containing two panels supported by Ionic, waisted half-columns. The panels are quartered with centre knops bearing dentilled borders, the whole surmounted by a modillioned cornice. The door to this chamber and to that above the rear room has composite surrounds on bulbous bases, with panels treated like those on the overmantel.

The smaller chamber above the rear room has its own plaster ceiling, a single ribbed unit comprising intersecting spades with roses but no foliage. A third door surround, with panelled door but more simply treated, gives into another room from the same first-floor landing.

The plaster ceilings are illustrated in French's article in Transactions of the Devonshire Association 89 (1957), pages 129–131, plates 10A and 12A.