Ranscombe Farmhouse

Ranscombe Farmhouse is likely an early 17th-century building, probably originally constructed as a small gentry or manor house. It was later refenestrated around the mid-19th century. The farmhouse is built of coursed and dressed slatestone rubble, with a gable-ended slate roof featuring decorative ridge tiles from the 19th century. It has an unusual H-shaped plan with a central, two-story porch. This porch leads into a lobby, which may have once been a passage. Large rooms flank the lobby, each heated by a fireplace on the rear wall. Cross wings project at both the front and rear, each containing a newel stair on the inner rear face, likely originally housing two rooms. The left-hand wing is now unoccupied.

The front facade is symmetrical, featuring five bays, with the outer two projecting and a central two-story porch. The windows are 19th-century 3, 4, and 6-light diamond leaded pane casements with stone hoodmoulds. The porch has a roundheaded, chamfered doorway constructed of dressed stone, with projecting imposts and a dropped keystone. The inner doorway has a richly moulded wooden frame and a contemporary studded door with moulded stiles and rails creating panels, and fleur-de-lys strap hinges. A molded plinth runs along the front of the house. A tall section of wall connects the main building to an outbuilding at the left-hand end. At the right-hand end, a garden wall projects, incorporating stone piers with molded caps. The rear elevation has wings at each end, each with a lean-to housing a newel stair on the inner face. The left-hand wing features a 3-light wooden mullion window on the first floor, while the right-hand wing has a 2-light ovolo-moulded mullion window on the ground floor.

The interior, only partially accessible, shows surviving ceiling beams and fireplaces that have been covered over. A stone newel stair is located in the rear left-hand wing, and a blocked roundheaded voussoir arch leads to the far left-hand room. Timber newel stairs are in the rear right-hand wing. The fireplace in the left-hand room has an ovolo-moulded wooden lintel, and several other moulded wooden doorframes are found on the first floor. The roof structure over the west wing is original, displaying substantial principal rafters joined to posts extending down into the wall, morticed apexes, threaded purlins, and collars halved and dovetailed onto the principals. Ranscombe Farmhouse is a rare and well-preserved example of an early 17th-century house in Devon, with the potential for further features to be revealed.