Old Rectory Including Forecourt Walls

Old Rectory, now house, at Cheriton Bishop. A building of late 14th or early 15th-century origin, with significant improvements made in the 16th century and late 17th to early 18th century, and further modernisation and extension around 1820.

The house is constructed of plastered cob on rubble footings with a plastered brick and cob extension, and has a wheat reed thatched roof. It presents a double-depth plan with two storeys throughout, facing north-west. The older front block contains a three-room ground plan with heated rooms on either side of a central entrance hall, with stairs rising to the left towards the rear. This layout is probably an adaptation of an earlier three-room-and-through-passage plan with an inner room to the south-west. A single-room kitchen block was added behind the hall and inner room around 1820. The main block has gable-end stacks, while the rear block has a gable-end brick stack to the south-west.

The front elevation is unbalanced with four windows. The front door, positioned slightly left of centre, is sheltered by a late 19th to early 20th-century porch with a slated gabled roof. Most windows are 20th-century replacements: a two-light casement with upper transom immediately to the right of the porch, a similar three-light window at the right end, a 19th-century tripartite sash (six panes above six panes) serving a room at the left end, and four first-floor windows, all three-light casements with eaves rising to gables over.

The roof of the front block is the original, virtually complete in its medieval form despite some cruck feet being cut away at the rear. It spans two wide bays to the south-west and two narrow bays to the north-east (left of front). Two of the three main trusses are true crucks; the central truss is a face-pegged jointed cruck with the principal in two parts jointed above collar level with a stop-splayed scarf and four face pegs. All three trusses are of large scantling with cambered collars and unchamfered arch braces below. At the apex, the principals are fixed into a saddle-piece carrying a square-set ridge purlin (Alcock Type C). From the top of each collar, a central post rises to the saddle-piece and longitudinal curving braces spring from its base to support the ridge. The two wide bays have intermediate trusses of lighter scantling. The principals are thought to rest on a buried wall plate; the collars are flat with straight raking braces below, and the principals meet over the top of the ridge with a small lap-jointed yoke immediately below (a variant of Alcock Type L2). Single sets of unchamfered windbraces are present, and there is evidence of an original half-hip arrangement at the south-west end. Most contemporary common rafters survive, and evidence of an original smoke louvre exists near the centre of the roof. This unusual devolved crown-post construction is probably the product of a late 14th to early 15th-century local carpentry school, comparable to Clifford Burton in Drewsteignton and The Old Rectory in Lustleigh. The roof is heavily smoke-blackened throughout, proving that the medieval house was heated by an open-hearth fire and divided by low partition screens.

Contemporary features below the roof are largely hidden by later work. A late 16th or early 17th-century granite fireplace with a hollow-chamfered surround is exposed in the south-western room, though it has been narrowed slightly on the left side. This room and the entrance hall contain 17th-century chamfered and stopped cross beams. The late 17th to early 18th-century dogleg stair has a closed string on its first flight but an open string with shaped brackets above, square-sectioned newels, a moulded flat handrail, and turned balusters. Some late 17th to early 18th-century two-panel doors survive on both floors, and contemporary panelled wainscotting lines the north-east room. Early wide oak floorboards cover the first floor. The entrance hall is floored with a chequer pattern made up of small square blocks of elm and dark oak, probably laid around 1820.

High cob walls with pantile tops, extending from each end of the front, enclose the front garden. This is an important medieval house.