Little Cutland

Little Cutland, formerly Woodhay Farmhouse, is a house and former farmhouse of late 15th to early 16th-century date with 16th and 17th-century improvements, extended in the 17th century. It is constructed of plastered cob on rubble footings with cob or stone rubble chimney stacks, one retaining the original stone chimney shaft while others are 20th-century brick. The roof is thatched.

The building follows a 3-room-and-through-passage plan facing south-east, with the service end room at the north-east end and an end stack serving that room. The hall contains an axial stack backing onto the through passage. A 17th-century kitchen was added to the end of the inner room with the roof extended on the same pitch to the end kitchen stack.

The front elevation presents a regular but asymmetrical arrangement of four windows with a fifth 20th-century ground floor window at the right end. These comprise a variety of 19th and 20th-century casements with glazing bars. One window on the first floor right retains a late 17th-century frame originally of three lights but now missing one of its flat-faced mullions. The centre two first floor windows are topped by relatively large thatch gables, the window to the right has a low thatch gable, and the window to the left has a thatch eyebrow. A 19th-century front door serves the passage, with the projection from the oven inserted into the hall stack immediately to its left. A 20th-century glazed door to the kitchen is at the left end. The roof is gable-ended.

The rear wall includes the original late 15th or early 16th-century oak hall window still in situ, featuring two narrow lights with a simple square-section mullion and simple trefoil heads cut from a single piece of oak. It has never been glazed.

The interior is well-preserved and contains work from several building phases. The hall preserves the oldest features. Besides the original rear window, the original roof survives, consisting of two bays. The central jointed cruck truss features face pegs augmented by a slip tenon, a flat collar, and threaded purlins. The truss, common rafters, and underside of the thatch are thoroughly smoke-blackened, indicating that the hall was open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. The cob crosswalls at either end appear clean and therefore secondary, probably of late 16th-century date, with the lower crosswall appearing to contain a blocked first floor window.

Probably in the late 16th century, the hall fireplace was inserted, built of small squared stone blocks with a plain and high oak lintel. The oven is a 19th-century insertion. The rear of the passage on the hall side features an oak plank-and-muntin screen including a slightly damaged shoulder-headed doorway, probably a section of an original low partition reused in the late 16th century.

At the same time or slightly later, the passage chamber was erected jettying into the lower end of the hall as far as the chimney breast. The hall was eventually floored in the early to mid 17th century with an axial beam and two half beams, all with soffit ovolo mouldings and scroll stops. Associated with this work, a post of large scantling was set against the inner corner of the stack to prop both the new main beam and the late 16th-century jetty bressumer. This post has richly moulded corners with single and double ovolos and scroll stops, some incised as leaves.

The cob crosswall at the upper end of the hall includes a cream oven alcove, probably of 18th or 19th-century date. Alongside is a 16th-century oak doorframe with chamfered surround and pyramid stops leading to the large and unheated inner room.

The inner room contains an axial beam of massive scantling, soffit-chamfered with late step stops at one end, probably of late 16th to early 17th-century date. In the back of the hall crosswall are two small elliptical-shaped recesses into the cob that appear to be lined with leather; their function and date are unknown.

The roof above is inaccessible but rests on purlins between the cob crosswalls at either end. Beyond the inner room is the 17th-century kitchen with a large end fireplace built of rubble with an oak lintel, soffit-chamfered with scroll stops. The 19th-century oven is probably a relining of the original. The two-bay roof above is inaccessible, but exposed feet of the truss suggest 17th-century date. There is also a 17th-century oak doorframe with chamfered surround and scroll stops between the kitchen chamber and inner room chamber.

The service room contains a roughly soffit-chamfered axial beam of uncertain date, with the roof above inaccessible. The fireplace here is probably a late 19th or 20th-century insertion.

Little Cutland is a well-preserved example of a typical multi-phase Devon farmhouse containing some interesting early features.