Summerfield

House on East Street, Bovey Tracey

This is a long, one-room-deep house of late 16th or 17th-century origin, substantially remodelled in the early or mid-19th century. The building has solid roughcast walls, probably of stone, and slated roofs with blue glazed ridge-tiles. Multiple rendered chimneystacks sit on the front slope of the roof at the left-hand side, with a third rendered stack on the ridge offset to the right, and a red brick stack on the right-hand gable of the main building.

The front elevation faces East Street and comprises five windows across two storeys, with a lean-to addition along the street frontage. At the right-hand end stands a single-window extension, set back with a lower ridge-line. The entrance is a six-panelled door with moulded frame in the second bay from the left; the four lowest panels are flush while the top two are now glazed. The two ground-storey windows flanking the doorway are six-paned fixed wood sashes. The right-hand window of the main range is a small two-light wood casement with 20th-century glazing. The second-storey windows of the main range are wood casements with two panes per light and three lights each, except for a five-light casement in the third window from the left. The splayed right corner of the main range carries wood casement windows in both storeys—two lights in the ground storey and three lights in the second storey, each with two panes per light. The extension to the right has an old plank door with wrought-iron strap-hinges at ground level and a two-light wood casement window with two panes per light at second-storey level. The left-hand gable-wall features a small 20th-century metal-framed window and a 19th-century six-paned wood casement window at second-storey level.

The garden front preserves its early or mid-19th-century appearance virtually unaltered. The main block is five windows wide, with all windows being wood casements except for French windows at the left-hand end of the ground storey. All windows have small square panes, with quarter-panes added to the ground-storey windows; many retain old glass. The central doorway has a six-panelled flush door with a cast-iron knocker and a narrow patterned fanlight above. A steeply gabled open wood porch with a long pendant in the gable has its gable front glazed with small panes. Between the two left-hand windows stands an old plank door beneath a pent roof covered with wood shingles on shaped wood brackets. To the left is a wood casement window with small panes on each storey, the ground-storey window having a segmental head. Further left is another old plank door with a plain fanlight over.

The interior contains two eastern ground-storey rooms with chamfered upper-floor beams, and a chamfered half-beam against the west wall of the entrance-passage adjoining these rooms. Other early features are likely concealed beneath plaster. At the east end of the roof are three 16th or 17th-century trusses. These are unblackened and have threaded purlins and ridge; the feet of the principal rafters are mostly hidden, but the tip of a jointed cruck is just visible in the eastern truss. The middle truss is closed with a straight collar and queen-struts, while the other two are open trusses. The eastern truss has a cambered collar; the western truss no longer retains one. West of these trusses is a lower truss of uncertain date and function. Weatherings on the stack in the west gable (now within the roof space) indicate that the roof of the whole western section has been raised.