Woodland Farmhouse

Farmhouse. Probably dating from the early 16th century, with significant alterations in the later 16th and 17th centuries. The walls are plastered cob on rubble footings, with cob, brick, and rubble stacks, and a wheat reed thatched roof. Originally a 3-room-and-through-passage house, with an inner room at the south-west end (the left side of the south-east facing front). A gable-end stack serves the inner room, a projecting front lateral stack the hall, and a 19th-century lateral stack the rear of the service room. There is a 17th-century gabled stair turret to the rear of the hall and 20th-century extensions to the rear.

The front has an irregular 4-window facade. A late 16th to early 17th-century double-ovolo moulded oak door frame is situated to the right of the large projecting hall stack. A 19th-century door provides access to the inner room on the left end. Two windows between these entrances have mid-17th-century oak frames with external ovolo and internal ogee moulded mullions; these consist of 3 lights to the inner room and 4 to the hall. A similar 3-light oak window illuminates the first floor to the left. Other windows are 20th-century wooden casements. All three first-floor windows are half-dormers with gabled roofs, and another exists on the rear elevation. The stair turret features small mid-17th-century oak windows with chamfered mullions; the upper window has 3 lights facing the front, and the lower window has 2 lights on the side. An 18th-century flat-faced mullion window with 2 lights, originally at the rear of the hall, is now incorporated into a 20th-century outshot. The rear passage doorframe is identical to the front.

The interior is notably well-preserved. The passage is lined on both sides with 16th-century oak plank-and-muntin screens, which are incomplete on the lower side. These screens have chamfered muntins with step stops. Crossbeams in both the inner and service rooms share this treatment, suggesting both were floored before 1600. The hall remained open into the 17th century. A mid-17th-century upper hall screen has been removed, but the head beam remains, supported by an end stile to the front, featuring a scroll stop, and a doorpost to the rear with a bar runout stop—the same treatment as the hall crossbeam. A mid-17th-century ogee-moulded oak doorframe with cleaved roll stops leads to an oak winder stair which stands on the footings of a smaller 16th-century newel turret. Roof timbers at each end have been replaced, but original side-pegged jointed crucks survive over the hall and the lower side of the passage. While the roof space is inaccessible, the hall truss apparently shows signs of soot, suggesting the open hall originally had a hearth fire. A cob fireplace with a plain lintel is located in the hall, indicative of a 17th-century date. This is an unmodernised farmhouse that retains good internal and external detail. It is likely the site of a medieval estate, given its name relating to one of eighteen tithings of Crediton Hundred. The property was first recorded in 1249 (Devon SMR).