Rudge Farmhouse

Rudge Farmhouse is a large farmhouse of exceptional historical and architectural importance, located in Morchard Bishop. The house originated in the late 14th to early 15th century, underwent substantial improvements and extensions in the late 16th to early 17th century, and was modernised and refurbished around 1852.

The building is constructed of plastered rubble with some 19th-century brick patching, and plastered cob on rubble footings to the extensions. It has rubble chimney stacks with mid-19th-century brick chimney shafts, and originally had a thatch roof before being reslated in 1852. The structure follows a much-altered 3-room-and-through-passage plan facing south, with a former service room at the west end. A late 16th to early 17th-century single-room block extends at right angles from the rear corner of the former service room, with a contemporary stair block to the rear of the hall and a contemporary dairy at right angles to the rear of the inner room. End stacks serve the former service and inner rooms, with a rear lateral stack to the hall.

The house now stands at 2 storeys throughout. The front elevation was redesigned around 1852 as a symmetrical 5-window composition comprising central and end tripartite sashes flanked by sashes positioned above each of the 2 front doors. All sashes, including the central lights of the tripartite sashes, have 12 panes set under segmental arches. Both doors are 4-panel with overlights, panelled reveals, doorcases, and flat hoods supported on pairs of shaped brackets. The front is finished with stucco quoins at each end and a plinth, with eaves carried on a series of shaped brackets. The roof is gable-ended. The dairy at the rear includes a late 16th to early 17th-century 3-light oak window frame with ovolo-moulded mullions and a central iron casement with shaped catch and leaded glass.

The interior, although thoroughly refurbished around 1852, retains exceptional early fabric and likely preserves much hidden beneath Victorian plasterwork. The former hall, now serving as an eastern entrance hall, is separated from the former inner room by a thick cob partition rising to first-floor level with framing above. At the western end of the hall section, part of a 16th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen is exposed on the former passage side (now a small pantry lobby). The posts are chamfered, the sill is of unusually large scantling, and a blocked doorway appears to be shoulder-headed, though the frame is obscured. Across the passage and pantry lobby runs a richly moulded 16th-century oak axial beam that does not extend into the service room.

The service room, now a kitchen, contains a large, probably 17th-century stone fireplace with a plain oak lintel, and two sections of reset small-field panelled oak wainscotting on the walls. The sunken star motifs along the frieze are thought to represent the emblem of the Leigh family, who occupied Rudge from at least 1546 to the late 18th century. The panelling itself is 17th century despite an inscribed date of 1776. From the rear of the passage, an originally external door with an early to mid-17th-century oak doorframe featuring a moulded surround and exaggerated late step stops gives access to a straight flight of stairs in a narrow extension behind the hall. The top landing incorporates part of what was presumably an earlier newel turret. The first floor exposes only Victorian features.

The roof is one of the finest and most completely preserved late 14th to early 15th-century domestic roofs in Devon. It was raised to accommodate slate in the mid-19th century, and the builder, W. Coles of Crediton, chalked a note on the timbers dated "March 23 1852" recording the re-raftering work. He left the old roof largely intact. The roof comprises 5 bays constructed of oak timbers of massive scantling. The trusses employ an unusual type of jointed cruck in which the principals are scarfed to the posts and held together by 4 face pegs and a buried slip tenon. The posts rest on templates just below first-floor level. Each truss incorporates a cranked collar, arch-braces, and a large yoke carrying a square-set ridge (Alcock's Type H apex). They support 2 sets of diagonally set purlins, with the larger lower purlins being butt purlins and the upper purlins threaded. Each bay includes a single pair of windbraces, which survive intact on the rear (north) side but have been removed from the front in some places. A distinctive feature is the pegging: both the number of pegs used to fix the joints (for example, 3 each side securing the collars) and the visual effect of leaving the pegs projecting and untrimmed create an unusual appearance. The roof was originally half-hipped at each end. At the west end, a half-thickness truss against the end wall carried a now-removed hip post, but the corresponding structure at the east end has been removed. The common rafters are another unusual feature, with collars resting on the upper purlins except over the eastern bay.

The roof appears to have been originally open from end to end, though smoke-blackening at both ends may be disputed; there are no closed trusses. The west end and eastern trusses have chamfered arch-braces, while the remaining trusses carry roll moulding. Divisions in the roof space are early, though probably not original. The western end bay is divided from the rest by a framing section slightly east of the truss, resting on a crosspiece set between the lower purlins. This framing appears not to have descended further down and may have been a smoke screen—a device to confine smoke from an open hearth fire to the central hall section where the central bay retains evidence of a smoke louvre. At the eastern end, the remains of a large full-height framed partition are positioned over the hall-inner room cross wall.

Interpretation of this important house's development is difficult from the roof alone. It could be argued that the upper end was originally at the west and was later reoriented. The ownership and occupation of the house can be traced back to Pater the Rugge in 1330.