Staple Court Farmhouse

Staple Court Farmhouse is a farmhouse in Hockworthy, dating from the early or mid 16th century with major improvements in the later 16th and 17th centuries. It was thoroughly refurbished in the mid 19th century and renovated in 1986. The building is constructed of plastered stone rubble, probably with cob, with stone rubble chimneys topped with 19th-century brick, and a slate roof.

The original plan was a three-room-and-through-passage house facing south. At the west end, the inner room parlour has a projecting gable-end stack. The hall contains a large axial stack backing onto the former passage, and a curving stair turret projects to the rear at the lower end. The passage lower screen has been removed, uniting the passage and service end kitchen. The kitchen also has a gable-end stack. A 19th-century single-room service block projects at right angles to the rear of the passage and kitchen, with its own gable-end stack, and 19th-century outshots run across the back of the rest of the main block.

One surviving original roof truss demonstrates that the original house was open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. In the later 16th and 17th centuries, chimney stacks were inserted and the house was progressively floored over. In the late 17th or early 18th century, the service end was rebuilt as a kitchen. The mid 19th-century refurbishment involved a complete rebuild of the inner room parlour end. The house is two storeys.

The south-facing exterior presents an irregular three-window front with various 20th-century windows. At the right end are 1986 oak-framed casements on each floor. To the left are three French windows (the rightmost being the former passage front doorway) and two first-floor horned 16-pane sashes. The roof is gable-ended, and the main doorway is now in the west end with a 20th-century door. The rear has 19th and 20th-century casements, most with glazing bars.

The former hall contains most of the historic fabric. At the upper end is the headbeam of an oak plank-and-muntin screen, with evidently moulded missing muntins. Directly above the first-floor crosswall is large-panel oak framing, which is secondary, probably mid 16th century, infilling a formerly open truss. The only original surviving truss is a side-pegged open truss with provision for windbraces, smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The inserted hall fireplace, dating from the mid or late 16th century, is built of neat chert blocks with a soffit-chamfered oak lintel cut away in the centre to form a low ogee arch; the fireplace appears to have been narrowed slightly. An early or mid 17th-century three-bay ceiling is carried on richly-moulded axial beams with step stops. Some sections of 17th-century small-field oak panelling survive around the hall. The staircase is 17th-century in style but was built in 1986.

The kitchen has plain carpentry detail, with a crossbeam and oak fireplace lintel both featuring roughly-chamfered soffits. There is also a reset length of timber—a beam of massive scantling dating from the early or mid 16th century, part of an early or mid 16th-century intersecting beam ceiling. It is unusually richly moulded and includes a band of twisted bead and ribbon. The rest of the house contains 19th-century carpentry only.