West Fursham Farmhouse Including Garden Walls Adjoining To South-East

West Fursham Farmhouse including garden walls adjoining to south-east

This is a former farmhouse of exceptional architectural interest, dating from the mid 16th century with major improvements made in the late 16th and 17th centuries. The south-west end was rebuilt following a collapse around 1930, and the house was modernised circa 1970. The building is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble chimneys (one rebuilt in brick around 1930) topped with 20th-century brick. The roof is thatched, with slate covering the outshots.

The house follows a three-room-and-through-passage plan, built across the hillslope and facing south-east. At the south-western end is a small inner room with a projecting end stack. The hall contains a large axial stack backing onto the passage, and the service end comprises a large room with an end kitchen stack and a winder stair rising alongside. Originally only the inner room was floored; the ground floor space here was probably a dairy and likely had no fireplace before circa 1930. The remainder of the house was originally open to the roof, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire.

The hall fireplace was inserted probably in the late 16th century, at which time a first floor chamber was also built over the passage. The service end room was floored and converted to a kitchen probably in the late 16th or early 17th century. The hall itself was floored in the mid 17th century. The location of the early main stair is unclear; the present stair dates to the 20th century. The house has two storeys with secondary outshots across the rear.

The exterior presents an irregular three-window front of 20th-century casements, the oldest retaining glazing bars while the latest, including those on the left end, feature leaded glass. The front passage doorway is positioned right of centre and contains a 20th-century panelled door behind a contemporary thatch-roofed porch on timber posts. The roof is gable-ended.

The interior contains several features of high quality and considerable interest. In the passage, on the back of the probably late 16th-century hall fireplace, there is an unusual timber joist ledge supported on oak corbels. The hall fireplace itself has been lined with 20th-century brick but retains granite ashlar with a chamfered surround. The passage chamber jetties into the hall flush with the face of the stack. The mid 17th-century hall ceiling is a particularly fine example, with crossbeams displaying broad ovolo mouldings with some surviving keeled step stops, and exposed joists that are ovolo-moulded with bar run-out stops. The upper end partition is probably original, perhaps originally an oak plank-and-muntin screen, but is now plastered over with no carpentry visible in the inner room. The partition on the lower side of the passage is also plastered over.

The service end kitchen retains a late 16th to early 17th-century three-bay ceiling; the inner crossbeam has plain soffit chamfers while the outer beam is soffit-chamfered with step stops. The large kitchen fireplace is granite with a soffit-chamfered and step-stopped oak lintel. To the right an oak winder stair rises over the oven housing, while to the left is a cream oven alcove. The original full height crosswall is exposed only in the roofspace, where it is revealed to be large-framed. Above the inner room the roof is clean and original couples of common rafters survive. The remainder of the roof structure, including the common rafters and underside of the thatch, is smoke-blackened from the open hearth fire. The roof is carried on large side-pegged jointed cruck trusses with cambered collars and butt purlins, representing a notably well-preserved late medieval structure.

A strip of garden extends across the front of the farmhouse, forming a terrace which is revetted and bounded by a 19th-century low stone rubble wall. This is a particularly interesting multi-phase Devon farmhouse whose late medieval roof remains substantially intact. The later features display high quality craftsmanship, especially the mid 17th-century hall ceiling. Other original features are likely hidden beneath later plaster, such as the framing of the upper hall crosswall.