Whitsford Farmhouse

Whitsford Farmhouse is a farmhouse of late 15th or early 16th-century date, remodelled and possibly extended in the 17th century, with 19th and 20th-century alterations. It is constructed of rendered stone rubble and cob with an asbestos slate roof. The roof has a brick stack backing onto the cross-passage, a small brick stack at the right gable end, and an axial lower end brick stack. The lower end may well have originally been a byre.

The building is two storeys high with a five-window range. A range of casements dates to the 19th or 20th centuries: two 2-light casements with 4 panes per light on the left; three half-dormers with raking roofs and 2-light windows with 3 panes per light on the right. The ground floor contains a 2-light casement with 6 panes per light on the left, a 3-light casement with 4 panes per light, a 4-panelled door (the upper panels glazed) to the cross-passage, a 6-paned single-light window lighting the hall hearth area, a 2-light hall window with 6 panes per light, and a 2-light casement with 3 panes per light to the right end. Continuous slated outshuts extend to the rear.

The plan is complex in its development. Basically, it comprises three rooms and a cross-passage containing the principal staircase to its rear. The extended lower end incorporates an integral lofted outbuilding which until recently was used as a stable. Solid cob partitions stand on each side of the cross-passage and between the hall and inner room.

The interior retains 19th-century joinery principally intact throughout. The hall has a cross ceiling beam and bressumers at each end with relatively thin chamfers terminating in scroll-stops. An axial partition has been inserted to the rear of the hall to create a passage to the inner room. The hall fireplace is blocked up but the original lintel probably survives. The inner room has a single axial beam, roughly chamfered and unstopped. A blocked doorway, now a cupboard, in the rear wall indicates access to a former rear staircase which has been rebuilt; the stair turret was probably enlarged. The lower end room, set down a pronounced step from the cross-passage, is featureless. The principal stairs at the rear of the cross-passage break into two flights at the head, serving the room over the lower end and the chamber over the hall.

Solid cob partitions rise to the apex of the roof between the hall and inner room, and on the upper side of the cross-passage, incorporating the hall stack. A solid cob wall divides the cross-passage from the lower end. A single truss with short curved feet, diagonally threaded ridge purlin and two tiers of threaded purlins survives over the lower end, with no sign of smoke-blackening. The stone rubble wall between the lower end and integral former stables is clearly an insertion, as is the stack, strongly suggesting that this extended lower end was once a byre with access from the cross-passage.

Over the hall stands an impressive cruck truss with two tiers of threaded purlins, a diagonally set ridge purlin and a morticed and tenoned cambered collar. All the roof members over the hall, including the rafters, are thoroughly smoke-blackened. The feet of the principals appear to rest on the hall ceiling beam—unusually for North Devon, an upper cruck truss—though insertion of the hall ceiling may have involved its conversion from a true cruck. The thin chamfers and scroll stops of the hall ceiling beams suggest a late date well into the 17th century for the insertion of the hall floor and insertion of the stack. The roof over the inner room has been entirely replaced in the 20th century, but the solid cob wall between the hall and inner room suggests the inner room may be an addition to the original hall, cross-passage and byre, with two storeys from the outset, the upper storey served by its own stair turret. If the inner room is an addition, this is likely to have occurred before the flooring over the hall.

Other indications that the lower end served as a byre are the late insertion of the gable end stack heating the inner room and the fact that until recently the latter was known as a dairy—the service room was located at the upper end of the hall. This is therefore an interesting example of a probable longhouse with byre, cross-passage, former open hall and a suggested added upper service end.