Glebe House and Glebe Cottage

Glebe House and Glebe Cottage are a farmhouse, originally built in the 16th century, located in Romansleigh, Devon. The building was re-floored and re-roofed in the mid-17th century, divided into four smaller dwellings in the mid-19th century, later returned to a single house, and is now once again divided into two separate dwellings. The construction consists of rubble and cob walls, rendered and whitewashed, with a half-hipped thatched roof and brick chimney shafts.

The building’s complex internal layout has been significantly altered during past divisions. Glebe House, on the right-hand side, contains a large main room on the ground floor with a gable-end stack and a rear corner stack. It also includes a narrow mid-19th century wing at the rear, featuring two large back-to-back fireplaces. Glebe Cottage, on the left-hand side, comprises two rooms with a central staircase, alongside a small room with a gable fireplace and another room with a rear lateral fireplace containing an oven. The original building plan is not discernible.

The exterior is two storeys high and presents an asymmetrical three-window range on the first floor, with five windows on the ground floor. The windows are good quality 19th-century 2- and 3-light casements with glazing bars. A plank door is situated in a lean-to porch on the left-hand side of Glebe Cottage, while Glebe House has a 20th-century door in its rear wing. There is evidence of two further blocked door openings on the front façade, inserted when the house was divided into four dwellings.

Inside Glebe House, the main room features an unchamfered cross ceiling beam. It contains a small gable-end fireplace with a simple unchamfered wooden bressumer, a bread oven, and a rear corner fireplace with a cambered brick arch and oven. Glebe Cottage features a central 19th-century staircase. A room to the right has a small fireplace with an unchamfered wooden bressumer, and a room to the left has a fireplace with an oven. This left-hand room has two cross ceiling beams, chamfered with run-out stops, and original joists.

The roof is of circa 18th century date and incorporates four collar-beam trusses resting on the wall tops. The collars are pegged in place on the side, the apex joint is a mortise and tenon, and the upper purlin sits in a shallow trench with the lower purlin pegged to the back of the principal rafter. Scattered timbers within the roof are lightly blackened, possibly indicating their reuse from an earlier roof of an open hall.