The Hoopoe

The Hoopoe is an early 19th century house, now incorporating a restaurant, located on the west side of Fore Street, Chulmleigh. The front facade is of lath and plaster, while the rear is stone rubble. The roof is slate with gable ends, and a brick stack sits in the rear right-hand corner.

The building’s plan is generally T-shaped. The main range originally comprised two rooms divided by a central passage, but these internal partitions have since been removed, creating a large room now used as a restaurant to the right of this passage, which runs from front to rear. A single fireplace is located in the rear right-hand angle. A dog-leg staircase projects into, and is screened off from, the principal room in its left-hand rear corner, entering the short connecting passage from the front range to the two-storey rear wing. This wing consists of an unheated room beyond which is a lower, lofted kitchen range with a gable end stack, also of a single room plan.

The exterior is three storeys high and features a two-window front. It contains early 19th century 16-paned hornless sash windows with flush sash boxes. The ground floor has a six-panelled door to the left of a large double-fronted shop window with three tall vertical panes either side of a recessed doorway. A plain timber fascia with a dentilled cornice tops this section. The rear outshut features a 12-paned sash window facing the courtyard, and an early 19th century three-light casement window with eight panes per light to the upper storey, along with a six-panelled door with a bracketted hood, all facing the rear kitchen wing and the courtyard.

Inside, a cambered brick arch sits above the fireplace in the principal room. The 19th century staircase has stick balusters and turned newels, rising through three storeys. All the original 19th century joinery remains intact on the upper storeys. A corner cupboard with a fielded panelled door is integral to the rear range. A concealed fireplace is located in the gable end stack of the rear range. The roof structure of the main range retains three king-post trusses.

The curtilage extends to the rear of the adjoining property, and a blocked doorway in the entrance passage suggests that the two properties were once united as a single dwelling. The courtyard contains three late 18th or early 19th century lean-to outbuildings that back onto the rear of Sun Cottage. One of these outbuildings contains a fireplace with a thin, narrow, chamfered timber lintel.