Truants Cottages

A house, possibly originally two cottages, dating to the mid to late 17th century. It was modernized in the late 19th century and has a 20th-century extension. The walls are plastered cob on rubble footings, with cob stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brickwork and a thatched roof, with corrugated iron to the 20th-century extension. The house originally comprised two rooms of unequal size, facing south-south-east, with projecting end stacks, each containing an oven. The larger room is on the left, and a 20th-century staircase was inserted into the right room. A 20th-century extension is on the left (west) end, and late 19th- to early 20th-century stables are located on the right. The main block is two storeys high and has a regular, though asymmetrical, four-window front featuring 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars. All first-floor windows are set beneath thatched gables filled with weatherboarding. A 20th-century front door, with a contemporary gabled, slate-roofed porch, is located slightly right of centre. A two-storey, flat-roofed extension to the left adds a fifth window to the front. The main roof is gable-ended to the right and steeply hipped to the left. The original structure is largely intact inside. Both fireplaces are built of stone rubble with oak lintels, with soffit-chamfered scroll stops and 19th-century ovens. The oven in the left room is a cloam oven made by Dennis and Milton, Old Pottery, Bideford, as indicated by a stamp. Floor beams, two to the left of the cob cross-wall and one to the right, are soffit-chamfered and unstopped, the latter associated with scratch-moulded joists. The roof is constructed with A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars.