South Hole Farmhouse

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 24/04/2020

SS 51 NW 7/122

LITTLE TORRINGTON South Hole Farmhouse

II* Farmhouse. Early C17 with C20 addition. Rendered cob and stone rubble walls. Gable ended asbestos slate roof. Brick stack at each end and axial brick stack offset from ridge.

Plan: three room and through passage plan with lower end to the left. Hall stack backs onto the passage, inner room heated by gable end stack, lower room also has gable end fireplace but this may be an insertion. To the rear of the hall is a newel stair in a projection. At the front of the inner room is a long integral wing mainly consisting of a barn but the section nearest the house on the first floor was always a chamber accessible from the house. The room below it has been taken into the house in the late C20 previous to which it apparently had a non-domestic use. C20 lean-to added behind lower end. Exterior: two storeys. Asymmetrical three window front of late C20 two-light casements, three-light on the ground floor of which the right-hand one is earlier C20. On the inner face of the wing is an early C20 French window. C20 lean-to porch at centre with wide late C20 plank door behind. Barn at end of wing has central cart entrance on inner face with C17 chamfered wooden doorframe and buttress either side.

Interior: very complete C17 joinery including original chamfered and hollow step- stopped door frames between passage and hall, and hall and inner room, also at the bottom and top of the stairs and two others on the first floor including one to the chamber over the wing. Several have C17 plank doors. Open fireplace to hall has rebuilt brick arch and good C19 chimneypiece. Rough closely-spaced ceiling beams. At the higher end of the hall is a C17 plank and muntin screen whose muntins are chamfered with hollow step stops. In front of the screen is a contemporary built-in bench with decorative finial at its end. Inner room fireplace has chamfered wooden lintel and herringbone pattern at the back.

The original roof structure survives over the whole house consisting of four pairs of very substantial straight principals with trenched purlins and curved collars which are halved on with dovetail joints. A similar truss survives over the wing. The timbers all appear slightly darkened but not actually smoke-blackened.

This is a very complete example of a good quality C17 farmhouse, rather unusual for its integral attached barn wing.

Listing NGR: SS5047215825