East Pitt Farmhouse

A farmhouse of late 15th to early 16th-century origin, substantially improved during the later 16th and 17th centuries, and well modernised circa 1986. The building is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with sections entirely of stone rubble. Stone rubble chimney stacks, extended with 20th-century brick, support a thatch roof.

The house is arranged in an L-plan, with the main block facing north-east across a hillslope and adopting a 3-room-and-through-passage plan. At the north-western end is an unheated inner room, originally probably a dairy. The hall has an axial stack backing onto the passage. The service end kitchen features a large gable-end stack with what appears to be a substantial curing chamber projecting to the rear. A single-room unheated extension projects at right angles in front of the inner room.

The smoke-blackened roof timbers over the hall and inner room indicate that the original house was open to the roof from end to end, divided only by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. The inner room was floored over in the mid 16th century. The hall fireplace was probably inserted in the late 16th century, and the service end was rebuilt as a kitchen in the early or mid 17th century, at approximately which time the hall was also floored over. The date of the front extension is unclear, though it is probably 17th-century or possibly 16th-century; originally domestic, it and the inner room have long served as agricultural storage, possibly a cider house. Around 1986 a stair turret was built projecting from the back of the passage.

The hall and service end rise to two storeys. The inner room, formerly two storeys, is now open to the roof. The front block is also now open to the roof, though formerly two storeys and much rebuilt; it may once have been a parlour cross wing.

The main front is a near-symmetrical 3-window elevation of various casements. To the right of the door is a 20th-century casement with glazing bars. The remaining windows are earlier, oak-framed, and contain rectangular panes of leaded glass. The oldest is the first-floor right window, a 4-light opening with chamfered mullions. The other two first-floor windows are late 17th to early 18th-century with flat-faced mullions, and the ground-floor left 5-light window is probably 18th-century. The passage front doorway, roughly central, contains a 20th-century door in traditional style at the top of a flight of stone steps rising from a pitched cobble forecourt. The rear windows are all 20th-century but oak-framed. The front of the wing is blank, although there is a 19th-century doorway with a tiny window alongside on the inner side. The main block is gable-ended to the left and hipped to the right; the front wing roof is hipped.

Internally, the screen on the upper side of the passage, beyond the back of the stack, is missing. In the hall, the large fireplace is of stone rubble with a soffit-chamfered oak lintel. Early 17th-century axial ceiling beams are soffit-chamfered with bar run-out stops. At the upper end stands the lower part of a full-height oak large-framed crosswall in which the timbers are of large scantling, containing a round-headed arch doorway converted from the original shoulder-headed arch. At the back, the central king stud is fashioned to provide a ledge on which the axial beam of the former inner room ceiling rested. Another full-height oak large-framed crosswall separates the inner room from the front wing. On the lower side of the passage, a short length of an oak plank-and-muntin screen is exposed. In the former kitchen, the crossbeam is soffit-chamfered with scroll stops. The kitchen fireplace is blocked, though its oak lintel and a large brick-lined oven remain visible in a cupboard. The curing chamber is completely blocked; an external doorway evidently once provided access. The interior is whitewashed and appears to have been subsequently converted to a newel stair. The roof over the former kitchen is a 17th-century replacement carried on A-frame trusses with pegged and spiked lap-jointed collars. The original roof remains over the hall, with ridge and purlins projecting over the inner room. The open truss is a side-pegged jointed cruck truss of large scantling with a cranked collar, the soffit of which is chamfered with a carved boss. Some single set of windbraces still remain. This roof structure is smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The secondary framing at the upper end of the hall is sooted on the hall side only, proving that it was erected before the hall fireplace was inserted.

East Pitt represents a well-preserved and attractive example of a multi-phase Devon farmhouse. The quality of the original work is superior to the usual farmhouse standard of its period.