Stancombe Cottage

Stancombe Cottage is a farmhouse dating to around 1830. It is constructed of painted slate rubble, originally stuccoed, with a Welsh slate hipped roof featuring lead rolls to the hips and a moulded cast iron eaves gutter with lion masks at the joints. Rendered chimney stacks are present. The original plan comprised a principal room on either side of an entrance stair hall, with service rooms behind and two rooms deep. What may have been outbuildings at the rear have now been incorporated into domestic use.

The east-facing garden front has three bays. The central doorway is round-headed, with plastered reveals, a semi-circular fanlight with radiating glazing bars, and a six-panel door with glazed top panels. The ground floor has tripartite sash windows, the centre light containing 12 panes and the side lights 4 panes each. The first floor has three 12-pane sashes, the centre sash featuring horns. All windows are topped with flat brick arches. A slate-roofed verandah runs across the front, with hipped ends, supported by iron posts and incorporating a moulded cast iron gutter.

The south-facing front, overlooking the farmyard, presents a regular four-window range with widely spaced 16-pane sashes, again with a slate-roofed verandah across the entire front, supported by thin iron posts. The north elevation includes projecting hipped-roof end bays with a stack on the left-hand bay and sash windows on both floors of the right-hand bay. Two sash windows are recessed in the centre; the ground floor has tripartite sashes. C20 double doors are located centrally to the right. The rear, west-facing elevation has a central ground floor doorway and external stone stairs leading to a loft door above.

Internally, much of the original joinery remains, including panelled doors, architraves, cupboards, and window shutters, along with many original cast iron fireplaces with grates. The two front rooms feature moulded ceiling cornices. The central stair hall has a stone flag floor and open string stairs with stick balusters and a wreathed handrail ramped up to a column newel. Some internal partitions have been removed in the rear north-east service rooms to form an entrance hall for a new side entrance. The rear kitchen has a large open fireplace with a chamfered timber lintel. The house was once pictured on tins of Tucker’s and Sons Toffees of Totnes, and one such label is framed and displayed within the house.