Puddavine Cottage

Puddavine Cottage is a house dating from circa the 16th and 17th centuries, located in Dartington. It is constructed of white painted stone rubble with a thatched roof featuring a gabled end and eyebrow eaves. The roof is supported by stone rubble gable end chimney stacks with tapered caps.

The original plan consists of two rooms, each heated from a gable end stack. The lower right-hand room serves as the hall and kitchen, containing an oven in the fireplace and a stair turret at the rear right. The left-hand room is the parlour. The partition on the right side of the central through passage has been removed, creating a larger right-hand room with direct entry from the passage. A single storey outshut was added to the rear of the right-hand room and passage in the 19th century.

During the late 17th or 18th centuries, an outbuilding was added to the right end, which is now incorporated into the house as the kitchen. In the later 18th or 19th century, another outbuilding was built at the left end; the first floor of this structure has also been incorporated into the house accommodation. The land falls away steeply at the rear of the house, while the road at the front sits at a higher level than the building itself.

The exterior displays two storeys with a symmetrical three-window original range featuring early 19th-century three-light casements with diamond leaded panes and wooden lintels. The eaves thatch is swept over the first floor windows. A central doorway is protected by an old porch with stone rubble side walls and a lean-to shingle roof. The original flank door, decorated with cover strips and iron studs, has been moved to the front of the porch. To the right is a circa 17th or 18th-century extension receding at an angle, constructed of cob and stone rubble with a thatched roof at lower level and a half hipped end. This extension is one storey and attic with irregular fenestration of 19th-century casements with leaded panes. Set back to the left is a circa 19th-century outbuilding, now partly incorporated into the house, of stone rubble with a thatched hipped roof; it is one storey at the front and two storeys at the rear where the ground falls away behind the house. Behind the right-hand room and slightly projecting at the rear left is a stair turret with a chamfered wooden window frame. A later single storey rear outshut extends further back.

Interior features include a passage rear doorway, now within the later outshut, retaining its original chamfered timber door frame. A plastered stud partition separates the two rooms to the left of the former passage; the right-hand partition has been removed. Closely spaced roughly hewn cross-beams support the ceiling. The fireplace in the left-hand room is blocked, with a niche to its right featuring shaped shelves. The fireplace in the right-hand end has a chamfered cambered timber lintel with scroll or step stops extending over to the right. Wooden newel stairs in the rear right-hand corner, housed within the stair turret, rise over the oven to the first floor room. At the bottom of the stairs is an original chamfered doorframe with hollow step steps and a plank door with strap hinges terminating in fleur-de-lis.

The roof structure comprises three trusses with short curved feet embedded in the tops of the walls and morticed apexes. The collars are dovetail lap-jointed, each joint secured with a wooden peg and a nail. Threaded purlins and a threaded diagonal ridge-piece complete the framework, though the rafters have been replaced. The roof over the lower end wing, which was formerly an outbuilding, has straight principals with threaded purlins and threaded diagonal ridge-piece; the collars are halved, lapped and pegged to the faces of the principals.