Yeatson House Including Garden Area Wall To South And West

Yeatson House is a house, formerly a farmhouse, dating from the late 18th century and significantly remodelled and extended around 1830. It is constructed of stuccoed stone rubble with an asbestos slate hipped roof featuring a wooden modillion cornice. A gable-ended wing at the rear is covered with scantle slate and gable ends, and has exposed stone rubble walls. Rendered and painted brick stacks rise over the side walls and at the gable end of the rear wing.

The house is L-shaped in plan, with a symmetrical front range containing a drawing room to the right and dining room to the left. At the centre, a porch leads to a wide but shallow stair hall at the front with a small room behind. A wing behind the left hand room contains a servant's hall and kitchen with back stairs. A further wing, probably added around 1830, is built across the end of the rear wing and contains a back kitchen or dairy with stairs to a loft above. The ground level is lower to the right, where a doorway leads to a cellar beneath the right hand end of the main range.

The circa 1830 alterations include the remodelling of the ground floor interior, the addition of front and side porches, and the addition of the back kitchen wing.

The exterior is 2 storeys with an attic and cellar. The symmetrical 3-bay east front has a modillion cornice and rusticated quoins. Early 19th-century tripartite sashes with glazing bars are installed throughout—the ground floor windows have 12 panes flashed by 4-pane lights, the first floor 9 panes flashed by 3-pane lights, all with granite sills. A central doorway features a rusticated stucco enclosed porch with heavy cornice and central 19th-century glazed double doors flanked by double recessed round-headed windows. The inner doorway has a 19th-century 6-panel door. Two small hipped roof dormers with small-paned casements light the attic. The right hand end has a segmented-headed casement with glazing bars and a cellar door below. The left hand side has a porch to the side doorway with moulded cornice and 19th-century casement windows with small panes. The rear wing has casement windows with glazing bars and a flight of steps leading up to the kitchen garden at higher ground level; the stairs form a porch with a round-arch doorway to the back kitchen. A slate sundial with a shaped head inscribed 'T.E. 1830' (probably Thomas Edmonds) is set into the gable end of the rear wing.

The front and left hand side garden area wall is included in the listing. It is early 19th-century stone rubble with simple slate capping and acts as a retaining wall at the front where the trade is at a lower level than the garden. Gate-piers on the left hand side of the front have a mounting block to the side.

The interior joinery is entirely intact except for the two ground floor front room chimneypieces, which are 20th-century replacements. The house retains all of its 6-panel doors and internal window shutters. The two principal front rooms have deeply moulded plaster ceiling cornices of circa 1830. The small stair hall has a similar cornice and a fine open well staircase with stick balusters, a moulded mahogany handrail ramped up to a column newel on the landing and wreathed with bone inlay over the curtail, and an open string with scroll tread ends. The kitchen and servant's hall has panelled cupboards and back stairs. The back kitchen or dairy has a segmented arched fireplace with flues either side—possibly for cream scalding and curing hams—and a stone staircase to the chamber above. The first floor right hand room retains an original late 18th-century chimneypiece with a dentilled cornice and moulded architrave, the grate missing. The left hand room has another original chimneypiece with its cornice missing. Stairs from the first floor to the attic have stick balusters.

The initials T.E. on the sundial probably refer to Thomas Edmonds. Kelly's Directory of 1856 lists Thomas Hunt Edmonds of Fore Street, Totnes, as a solicitor. Either this Thomas Edmonds or possibly his father made the improvements to Yeatson House. The nearby farmhouse, Lower Yeatson, has a plaster panel inscribed "Thomas Edmonds 1833", suggesting he built Lower Yeatson when upgrading Yeatson House for his own use.