Downton Barton Including Backyard Wall Adjoining West

Downton Barton is a farmhouse in Dittisham, dating from the early 17th century with early and late 18th-century alterations. The building is constructed of rendered stone rubble, with the east and south fronts formerly slate hung on the first floor. It has a rendered gable end and axial and lateral stacks.

The original early 17th-century house followed a three-room and through-passage plan, with the lower end to the left (south), a hall with a large lateral stack at the back, and a great parlour at the higher right-hand end heated from a gable-end stack. A stair tower stood at the back behind the parlour and hall. The large kitchen wing with a gable-end stack and integral dairy outshut on its inner side may have been part of the original house or an early 18th-century addition. An extensive early 18th-century remodelling included building a staircase behind the lower end of the hall. Later in the 18th century, the space between the two rear stair towers was filled in to provide a landing linking the two stairs. The house was refenestrated, probably in the late 18th century, and despite recent external alterations, the exterior form is largely 18th century. The wall around the small back yard is probably also 18th century.

The building is two storeys with an asymmetrical four-window east front. The ground floor features 20th-century two-light sashes replacing former two-light twelve-pane sashes, and a late 20th-century three-light casement at the right. The doorway to the left of centre has an early 19th-century four-panel door with three glazed top panels, beneath a late 20th-century wooden canopy. Over the ground floor at first-floor level is a slate pentice with a plastered coved soffit, replaced on the left (south) return which has an asymmetrical three-window front of two late 20th-century three-light casements on the ground floor and three late 19th or early 20th-century two-light casements with glazing bars on the first floor. The rear west elevation features a gabled stair tower to the left of centre, a lean-to addition behind the hall's rear lateral stack which rises from a gable, and the large gable-ended rear wing with a catslide roof carried down over an outshut on its inner left-hand side. This forms the south aisle of the back yard, enclosed on the west side by a high rendered wall with a doorway from the road featuring a gabled projection and a dressed slate round arch. Inside the back yard, the back doorway into the outshut has a chamfered timber doorframe with mason's mitres, and to the right is a 20th-century three-light casement with glazing bars. The back yard is paved with slates and is now covered with a corrugated iron roof. A 19th-century cast-iron pump and granite trough stand in the yard.

Internally, the great parlour has a fireplace with shaped slate corbels and a fine early 17th-century moulded plaster overmantel with an achievement of arms flanked by pilasters. The ceiling beams cut through the top of the overmantel; the moulded plaster ceiling, which has collapsed, must therefore have been added later. A heavy stud partition separates the hall and parlour. The hall has early 18th-century fielded panel window shutters and a door to the passage, along with a 20th-century fireplace. The lower end room contains no features of note. An ovolo-moulded doorframe with a scratch-moulded plank door opens into the kitchen. The kitchen has a high ceiling with unchamfered beams and a large fireplace with a later simple wooden chimneypiece, now blocked by a 20th-century range. Eighteenth-century panelled doors to a cupboard stand to the side of the fireplace. An early 18th-century dog-leg staircase behind the hall stack has a moulded string, turned balusters, square newels, and a heavy handrail. The stair tower behind the parlour and hall has rounded internal walls and contains the remains of a later, late 18th-century dog-leg staircase with diagonally crossed balusters and square newels. Eighteenth-century panelled doors on the ground and first floors include some early 18th-century two-panel examples.