Silverstreet Farmhouse Including Front Garden Railings

The property is a farmhouse, dating to the late 17th century, with significant alterations and an enlargement in the mid-19th century. The earlier section is constructed of Flemish bond brick, incorporating a few burnt headers, while the rest is local stone rubble with brick dressings. The front elevation is plastered and lightly incised to resemble ashlar. Brick stacks are topped with 20th-century brick, and the roof is slate.

The house’s layout reflects a mid-19th-century design, facing south. The main block features a three-room plan with a central entrance hall containing the main staircase. To the west is a large, heated drawing room with a gable-end stack, adjacent to a small, heated lobby room backed onto the entrance hall. The dining room occupies the right-hand side, also with a gable-end stack. A lower, set-back kitchen block extends to the right, also aligned with the main block and featuring a large stack backing onto the dining room stack. The dining room section is double-depth, with an unheated dairy projecting to the rear, which is likely late 17th century. While the bulk of the house appears to be mid-19th century, some evidence, including brickwork and a late 17th-century kitchen stack, suggests a more extensive earlier fabric. The kitchen and dairy are two storeys, while the main block has two storeys with attics.

The front elevation is typical of the mid-19th century, displaying a regular, though not symmetrical, four-window arrangement with 16-pane sashes. The centrally located front door is a four-panel design with side lights. The main and kitchen roofs are gable-ended, with shaped kneelers and coping. Original brickwork is visible on the right end of the main block, featuring casements with rectangular panes of leaded glass within segmental arches. The rear elevation has 19th-century casements with glazing bars.

Internally, the house largely reflects the mid-19th century refurbishment, which included detailed joinery. An ornamental plaster cornice in the dining room may be from the late 17th century, with a simpler version found in a bedchamber above. The dairy contains a soffit-chamfered and scroll-stopped beam. The roof was not accessible during the survey.

The front garden is enclosed by a mid-19th century low rubble wall topped with wrought iron railings featuring alternate hoops and fleur-de-lys finials. This is an attractive 19th-century farmhouse which incorporates some 17th-century features, and represents an early example of brickwork in rural Devon.