Youldon House

The property is a farmhouse, now a house, dating from the late 15th or early 16th century, with alterations in the 17th and late 18th or early 19th centuries. It is constructed of colour-painted cob and stone rubble, with a slate roof having a gable end to the right and a hipped end to the left. A tall rendered stack stands at the right end, and a brick stack is located on the gable end of a rear projection. A large lateral hall stack is visible at the front, with slated offsets, which have been heightened in brick. The building originally had a through-passage plan, with a hall and inner room to the right; this wing was floored over in the 17th century, when a two-story, right-angled extension was added to the rear of the hall. A dairy was added at the gable end of the inner room, and an outshut was added to the rear in the angle of the main range and rear extension, both in the late 18th or early 19th century. In the 20th century, the through-passage was moved to the left, with the removal of a screen, and the lower end, formerly a barn, was converted into part of the dwelling. The house has two storeys and a 6-window front, featuring 20th-century windows. A slated gabled porch leads to an inserted doorway, and a weathered fire insurance plaque is located above the original doorway. An early 19th-century slate sundial sits in front of the lateral stack. The rear extension has slate capping to a projecting bread oven and a datestone above, bearing a carved but weathered date believed to be 1796, possibly marking the rebuilding of the stack.

Internally, the hall and right-angled rear extension feature chamfered beams with stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops. The rear extension also has a scroll-stopped fireplace lintel. A cambered chamfered lintel sits above the doorway at the head of the stairs. A section of plank and muntin screen survives, cased in behind the staircase from the hall, incorporating an old door with a slatted grille. The surviving part of the screen is set at right angles to the through-passage, but the grooved headrail of the original through-passage hall screen remains. A heavily smoke-blackened raised cruck truss with trenched purlins sits above the hall, with early undecorated plasterwork surviving in the roofspace. A cob partition extends from the hall to the apex of the roof, dividing the hall and lower end. The lower end contains two raised cruck trusses, without signs of smoke-blackening, with collars morticed into the soffits of the blades, the blade of the truss closest to the hip having been replaced with a straight principal.