Thorne

Farmhouse. Late 14th to early 15th century with late 16th and 17th century improvements, altered around 1860 and modernised around 1970. Mostly plastered cob on rubble footings but 19th century work is rubble with brick dressings, partly plastered and partly exposed. Stone rubble and cob stacks topped with 19th and 20th century brick. Thatch roof and reused interlocking tile on outshots. L-shaped building.

The unusually wide main block facing north has an unconventional 3-room-and-cross-passage plan with a parlour at the right (west) end, on the lower side of the present passage. The passage leads to a 17th century kitchen wing projecting at right angles to the rear of the parlour. A small inner room at the left (east) end of the main block has a dairy block of around 1860 projecting in front of it. The kitchen and parlour have end stacks, the latter projecting, and the hall has a rear lateral stack. 19th and 20th century outshots are on the inner side of the kitchen wing. Two storeys. Irregular 3-window front with a fourth in the gable end of the dairy, comprising a variety of late 19th and 20th century casements with glazing bars. First floor half dormers on the main block. The thatch lifts over the largest one on the right end and others have thatch gables over. The front passage doorway has a circa 1970 plank door and contemporary porch with monopitch tile roof. The main roof is gable-ended to the right where the parlour stack has an unusually stocky chimney shaft of early 19th century brick. It is half-hipped to the left where the end wall is exposed rubble with brick heads over 19th and 20th century replacement casements. This end was probably built around 1860, a date said to have been found scribbled on the under plaster of the dairy wall during renovation. The rear elevation and kitchen wing have mostly 20th century replacement fenestration.

Interior: The house has a good interior with a long and complex structural history. The roof and outer walls of the main block are late 14th to early 15th century. Four bays survive; the building probably once continued at least one further bay to the east. The trusses employ oak timbers of massive scantling. They are an unusual type of jointed cruck in which the principals are scarfed to the posts and held together by face pegs and buried slip tenons. The posts rest on templates just below first floor level; one is partly exposed alongside the hall fireplace. Each truss has a cranked collar, arch-braces and a large yoke carrying a square-set ridge (Alcock's Type H apex). They take two sets of diagonally-set butt purlins and each bay includes a single pair of windbraces, some of which are now missing. A distinctive feature of the roof is the effect created by leaving the many pegs projecting and untrimmed. At the west (parlour) end the ridge is supported in the gable by a large vertical post. The surviving central truss arch-bracing carries a roll moulding; the others are chamfered. Most of the common rafter couples also survive intact. The roof is thoroughly smoke-blackened from end to end, indicating that the medieval house was open to the roof, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth. The western truss, over the present passage-parlour partition, is filled with probably 16th century wattle-and-daub and sooted only on the hall side. This was then the upper end and the owner remembers uncovering a large arch in the front cob wall next to the dairy during re-plastering which may have marked the original through passage.

The parlour has a late 16th century volcanic ashlar fireplace with ovolo-moulded jambs and unusual pyramid stops. The rear wall (now stairs) includes a blocked presumably late 16th century oak 4-light window with chamfered mullions. The axial parlour beam is a 20th century replacement. The dating of the development of the hall is difficult since the carpentry displays little detail. The rubble fireplace in the hall has a replacement lintel. The hall and present passage are floored by a massive axial, roughly finished beam. Some reset 17th century oak small field panel wainscotting is along the front wall. The small eastern room includes a large timber-framed newel stair rising around the post supporting the hall beam.

The rear kitchen wing was rebuilt in late 17th century but includes early 17th century features near the main house, including a framed oak gable on top of the rear wall of the main block and a side-pegged jointed cruck. All other features are late 17th century. The kitchen has a soffit-chamfered and straight cut stopped crossbeam. The rubble fireplace in the partly cob stack uses a beam right across the end wall as lintel. A brick-lined oven is to the right. The alcove to the left may be a smoking chamber entered from outside. The roof truss in front of the chimney breast is a late 17th century A-frame with pegged lap-jointed collar.

Thorne is attractive from the outside but its appearance gives no hint of the age of the building. It includes a rare and relatively complete medieval domestic roof which is similar in construction to those at Rudge Farmhouse, Morchard Bishop and Bury Barton, Lapford.