Great Southdown Farmhouse

Great Southdown Farmhouse is a farmhouse with late medieval origins, largely rebuilt in the mid-17th century. An 18th-century cider house was added, with 19th and 20th-century modernisations and repairs also undertaken. The house is constructed of plastered cob and local stone rubble, with stone rubble and cob stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brick, and a slate roof, formerly thatched.

The house follows an F-plan with a four-room main block facing south-east. The north-east end features a former kitchen with a large external stack. The central two rooms served as the principal rooms, with an axial stack serving back-to-back fireplaces, and a front lobby entrance positioned in front of this stack. The room at the left end was likely an 18th or 19th-century extension, and an original rear block projecting at right angles behind the kitchen was probably a two-room dairy/service block, both unheated. Running corridors along the back of the main block which are outshot over two storeys, are believed to be original features. An 18th-century cider house projects at right angles to the rear of the center of the main block.

The front elevation has an irregular six-window arrangement of 20th-century casements, most without glazing bars. A 20th-century gabled porch with matching door now fronts the doorway, which is slightly right of centre. The roof is gable-ended to the left and hipped to the right. The rear block also features casements, while the rear of the main block has a couple of 18th or 19th-century windows with rectangular panes of leaded glass.

The interior has been largely modernised in the 19th century. Exposed carpentry detail reveals 17th-century features. Rooms either side of the axial stack in the main block have soffit-chamfered and straight-cut stopped beams, as do the rooms of the rear dairy/service block. The former kitchen has a soffit-chamfered crossbeam with elongated scroll stops. All fireplaces are blocked by later installations. The chamber above the room to the left of centre has a soffit-chamfered axial beam with bar-runout stops. The roof over this chamber was replaced in the 20th century, but the rest is still supported by 17th-century side-pegged jointed cruck trusses with dovetail-shaped lap-jointed collars. One bay of the rear block’s roof timbers show evidence of smoke blackening from a late medieval open heath fire, however the trusses at each end of this bay are clean and date to the 17th century.

The 18th-century cider house is partially floored, with the open section nearest to the house. The apple loft rests on large, plainly finished crossbeams, and the roof consists of A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars and X-apexes. Part of the cider press remains, but the remainder of the machinery has been relocated to Sidmouth Museum. The farmstead, Bisouthedon, is noted in the Assize Rolls of 1219.