Canonsleigh Barton Farmhouse

Canonsleigh Barton Farmhouse is an early 17th-century farmhouse, possibly associated with a datestone of 1628 (now set on Canonsleigh House), with refurbishment and reroofing in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The building is constructed of local stone rubble with exposed stone stacks and chimneys, and has a slate roof, formerly thatched.

The farmhouse has a four-room plan, originally facing east-north-east. The two central rooms are the largest, with an axial stack serving back-to-back fireplaces. A central lobby entrance is located at the side of this stack. The room to the left of centre was the kitchen, and the unheated room at the left end (now used as a separate cottage) was likely a service room, possibly including a dairy. The large room to the right of centre is the hall, and the room at the right end was a parlour, which likely originally featured an end stack. The outshots across the rear may be original. The hall has been consistently floored, and the house is two storeys high with attic space in the roof.

The exterior presents a balanced, though not symmetrical, four-window front, largely with 19th and 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars. However, on the ground floor to the right-hand end, there is an original three-light Beerstone window with hollow-chamfered mullions. A roughly central doorway features an original oak doorframe with a richly-moulded surround and one surviving urn stop, containing a late 18th to early 19th-century door. A contemporary gabled porch with an elliptical outer arch is also present. An old West of England insurance plaque is set in the gable. The main roof is gable ended.

The interior is largely the result of 19th and 20th-century modernisation, but the original layout remains substantially intact, and some original carpentry is visible on the ground floor. The former parlour has a soffit-chamfered crossbeam with rounded step stops. The hall features a four-bay ceiling of plain soffit-chamfered crossbeams, and a large fireplace with a soffit-chamfered and scroll-stopped curving oak lintel, including the remains of a large oven. No original carpentry is visible on the first floor, although the owners report discovering curving timbers in one of the crosswalls. The roof consists of a series of tie-beam trusses with X-apexes, with collars that may be secondary.

The farmhouse appears to be a complete structure, although some believe it may have originally been a wing of a larger house that connected with nearby Canonsleigh House. The datestone of 1628 on Canonsleigh House suggests a possible date for the farmhouse's construction.