Rashleigh Barton Including Rubble Walls And Outbuildings Adjoining To East

Rashleigh Barton is a farmhouse with adjoining outbuildings of considerable historical and architectural interest. The property has a late medieval or 16th-century core that was substantially enlarged and refurbished in the early 17th century, with particularly notable dated plasterwork from 1631 and 1633. Further minor improvements were made in the later 17th century, with 19th-century outshots and outbuildings added subsequently.

The construction is of plastered cob on rubble footings with some plastered stone rubble. The chimney stacks and shafts are built of local stone rubble, and the slate roof retains a number of 17th-century crested ridge tiles.

Plan and Layout

The house faces west with an irregular plan developed around a core three-room-and-through-passage arrangement, with the service end room at the right (south) end. South of the service end room is a 17th-century service cross-wing that projects forward and was partly rebuilt in the 20th century. The inner room at the right (north) end was rebuilt in the 17th century as a cross-wing projecting both forward and back, comprising a front parlour with master chamber above and a rear buttery or service room. A corridor between these rooms leads from the hall to the 17th-century stair block, which projects from the left (north) end on the same axis as the main block.

The service end room has an outer axial stack backing onto the cross-wing. The hall has a large rear lateral stack, and the parlour has a lateral stack in its outer side. Another axial stack at the upper end of the hall serves the first-floor chamber only. Nineteenth-century outshots run along the back of the hall, passage, service end room and service cross-wing, including a kitchen stack. The rear passage doorway is now blocked.

Exterior

The building is of two storeys. The main west front has a regular but not quite symmetrical 1:3:1 window arrangement to the left of the blind side of the stair block. All windows are early 20th-century casements with glazing bars. The central window of the main block, positioned over the passage door, is blind. The passage door has an overlight, and a second door on the inner side of the parlour cross-wing; both doors are 19th-century. Both cross-wings are gable-ended.

The service cross-wing end to the right was completely rebuilt in the 20th century, but the parlour cross-wing retains original 17th-century work. Its end includes the remains of 17th-century hoodmoulds with carved facetted labels. Another similar hoodmould appears on the inner side of the parlour over a sunken square panel with moulded surround containing the Clotworthy arms in bas-relief, flanked by a square label with foliate decoration to the left and a circular label containing the initials MC to the right. This plaque was probably moved from over the passage doorway in the 19th century when a parlour window was blocked and the present doorway inserted.

All chimney shafts are built of neat stone rubble with coping, and the hall stack is particularly tall. The left (north) gable end of the stair block has a 20th-century casement to the service room under the stairs, but above are two 17th-century oak stair windows: a tall three-light with ovolo-moulded mullions to the first half-landing and a shorter four-light with chamfered mullions to the stairhead. The rear side of the stair block has a 17th-century oak wall plate with ovolo moulding along its soffit. The outer side of the rear buttery/service room has a ground-floor 17th-century oak six-light window with chamfered mullions. On the outside of the right (south) service cross-wing, an external flight of stone steps leads to a first-floor doorway.

Interior

The interior is well preserved and of surprisingly high quality. The features that are visible appear to be 17th-century, though the core may include earlier hidden features. For instance, the roofspace over the hall is inaccessible and the partitions either side of the passage are clad with plaster.

Service End Room

The small service end room is lined with 17th-century oak small field panelling including a carved geometric pattern frieze. A window in the rear wall is blocked, and a cupboard to the left of the fireplace (blocking a doorway) has panelled doors hung on late 17th-century H-hinges. The fireplace is blocked but has a fine 17th-century oak three-panel chimneypiece above. The central panel is carved with the arms of the Clotworthy family, and the flanking panels contain ornate round-headed blind arches, all beneath a frieze of the same fabulous beast with acanthus leaf consoles between.

Hall

From the passage to the hall is a late 17th-century oak eight-panel door with moulded central muntins; the rest of the frame is scratch-moulded. The massive hall fireplace is of Beerstone with a flat Tudor arch and ovolo-moulded surround. It is partly blocked and the face of the lintel is covered by a 19th-century mantel shelf. The high ceiling was probably inserted in the 17th century into what was formerly an open hall. It is a four-panel intersecting beam ceiling clad with 17th-century ornamental plasterwork featuring the remains of moulded cornices and a broad frieze of repeating foliate ornament interrupted by shields.

At the upper end of the hall is an alcove containing a double coam oven, probably inserted in the 18th or 19th century. Alongside is an early 17th-century, possibly even late 16th-century, oak doorway with a bead-moulded surround and solid moulded architrave. The doorway once had an ogee or Tudor arched head but was altered in the 17th century to accommodate a round-headed twelve-panel oak door in which the head is enriched with a carved bifurcated scroll.

Parlour Cross-Wing Corridor

The corridor through the parlour end cross-wing is lined with 17th-century oak small field wainscotting and has 17th-century doors to the buttery/service room and parlour: the former eight-panel, the latter ten-panel and hung by cockshead hinges to a probably late 17th-century doorframe. The corridor ceiling is enriched with a regular series of moulded plaster sunflower roundels.

Parlour

The parlour is very fine. The granite fireplace has a flat Tudor arch with moulded surround and chamfer roll stops, and its hearth is made up of slates laid in herringbone pattern. A cupboard to the left has a reset eight-panel oak door, and a blocked door to a cellar under the stairs to the right has a chamfered and scroll-stopped oak frame.

The three-bay ceiling of rich ornamental plaster is lovely and unusual. The soffits of the cross-beams are enriched with florettes including some Tudor roses, and each bay has a moulded cornice over a frieze packed with various fruits, flowers and foliage. Each bay contains a central moulded plaster shield with various heraldic achievements from which flows a free pattern of intertwining foliage—a different fruiting plant in each panel—amongst which roam a menagerie of beasts, birds and insects. Some of the beasts are allegorical such as the griffin; others are real and range from the exotic monkey and elephant to the mundane fox and horse.

Staircase

The main stair has been dismantled, mended and re-erected. It rises in three broad flights around a closed well, and both sides are lined with oak small field panelling. The stairhead has reset oak railings with moulded high handrail and turned balusters and newel posts, the latter with ball caps. The stair also includes a fine original oak dog-gate made up of two tiers of slender balusters turned as smaller versions of the main balusters and crested by a row of ball caps.

Master Chamber Suite

The parlour cross-wing contains the master chamber suite. The rear room is now subdivided but was originally an unheated two-bay room with a curious narrow closet or wardrobe room to the rear. The coved ceiling was once enriched with ornamental plasterwork, but now only a fragment of the single-rib geometric pattern and one moulded angle spray survive. However, most of the frieze remains, and at each end are the Clotworthy arms in a strapwork cartouche enriched with putti and garlands of fruit and flanked by vases of flowers surrounded by snails, insects and birds. The inner cartouche features the initials I and MC with the date 1633. An original oak eight-panel door hung on cockshead hinges leads to the closet/wardrobe. From the rear to the front chamber is a round-headed eight-panel door with similar carved head to that below in the hall.

The front master chamber has a magnificent three-bay coved ceiling of ornamental plasterwork. Enriched ribs define a geometric pattern and include three pendants, the central one larger and open. The panels are filled with a riot of birds, beasts, flowers and fruits. Under a projecting cornice, the frieze features caricatured faces in cartouches flanked by fabulous beasts or intertwining foliage. The inner end has the Clotworthy arms in a moulded frame flanked by allegorical medallions in enriched strapwork cartouches, and on each side is a reclining figure in classical garb. The plasterwork at the outer end, however, is different and probably late 17th-century. The frieze here of shields and pegasus supporters is relatively formal, and above is a descending high-relief bunch of fruit flanked by cherubs.

Upper Chambers

There are two small chambers over the hall. The upper (northern) chamber is lined with 17th-century oak small field panelling. Its fireplace is blocked, and a relatively simple strapwork cartouche over the panelling on the party wall is partly hidden by the lowered ceiling. The oak panelled door between the chambers is hung on one original cockshead hinge and a replacement H-hinge and has small ball-cap handles similar to those along the top of the dog-gate. The lower end chamber is plainly finished. Both chambers have blocked windows in the rear wall; the lower end one still retains its original oak three-light frame with chamfered mullions and is exposed in a rear cupboard.

A 17th-century doorway with chamfered surround and scroll stops leads from the lower end chamber through the rear wall to a 17th-century corridor to the service end chambers. The chamber over the service end and passage has a painted ashlar fireplace with chamfered surround and pyramid stops. The chimney breast has a moulded plaster lozenge-shaped plaque with angle sprays on each side containing another Clotworthy family arms and the initials I and MC with the date 1631. This room also has a 17th-century moulded plaster cornice.

Outbuildings and Courtyard

From each end of the rear, high plastered rubble walls with slate coping extend eastwards, soon returning to enclose a small courtyard. This contains a 19th-century woodshed with slate monopitch roof in the north-east corner and 19th-century pigsties against the back wall. Most of this appears to be 19th-century work, but the northern wall (abutting the buttery/service room) is late 17th-century. It is very high and includes a large doorway containing an oak bead-moulded frame with a broad moulded architrave on the outside face.

Historical Context

Rashleigh was owned by the Rashleigh family from the 14th century until 1503, when it was acquired by Thomas Clotworthy, whose arms appear over the parlour door.