Berry Farmhouse

Berry Farmhouse is an early to mid 18th-century remodelling of what was probably an earlier house, located in Hartland. The building retains rendered stone rubble walls, exposed at the rear wing, beneath a hipped bitumized slate roof. Rendered stacks with brick shafts project from each end of the front range, while the rear parallel range has a rendered brick axial stack. Two axial stacks of squared rubble with dripcourses, probably dating to the 17th century, serve the rear range.

The plan is basically L-shaped, with a front range of two large rooms flanking a stairhall, a short parallel range behind the left-hand end, and a longer wing behind the right-hand end comprising a two-room plan with a columbarium (dovecote) at its end. The rear wing appears to pre-date the front range, which exhibits a more formal and imposing 18th-century style. The parallel range behind the left-hand room is a large kitchen likely added in the 19th century.

The building is two storeys high. The front elevation features a symmetrical five-window façade with early 19th-century 12-pane sashes on the first floor, the ones on the right-hand side being taller. On the ground floor left is a blocked window opening with a late 20th-century casement inserted to its left. A central 20th-century lean-to porch with part-glazed door sits on the right-hand side. The rear wing, slightly set back from the right-hand end, has an asymmetrical four-window outer face. To the left on each floor are late 19th or early 20th-century casements of two and three lights respectively, with a two-light casement to the right on the ground floor. Otherwise, probably 18th-century 12-pane hornless sashes are set flush to the outside wall. Wooden lintels prevail, apart from a brick arch over the ground floor left-hand window. A small lean-to sits in the angle between the front block and a hipped roof porch to the left of centre, with an early 20th-century plank door in its left-hand side. The rear parallel range projects from the left end of the front block. At the end of the rear wing, returning slightly to the left-hand side, is a brick columbarium on the first floor with pigeon-holes on the rear and side walls. Between the rear wing and parallel range, a small hipped roof covers the staircase.

The interior of the front range retains fairly complete original joinery. The left-hand room is panelled with sunken panels and features eared architraves to the window openings and a tall round-headed arch at the rear with a pediment over. The doorway has an eared architrave with dentilled cornice. The right-hand room has a chair rail and probably obscured panelled dado with a large dentilled cornice above. An 18th-century chimneypiece with projecting central plaque and egg and dart cornice is present. An original open string staircase with carved tread ends and turned and moulded balusters connects the floors. The rear room in the wing has complete early 18th-century fielded panelling, chair rail, shutters, and a chimneypiece with moulded cornice.

Berry was occupied during the 18th century by the Wolferstan family, recorded as gentry in a memorial to Nicolas Wolferston (1695–1763) in Hartland Church. An illustration of Hartland Abbey in 1767 shows Berry in the distance, apparently of similar appearance to the present day. The house represents an unusual and unaltered survival in North Devon of an 18th-century house of considerable quality.