Bale'S Ash And Adjoining Outbuildings And Front Garden Walls

Bale's Ash and Adjoining Outbuildings and Front Garden Walls

A farmhouse with adjoining outbuildings and front garden walls, combining 17th-century origins with 18th and 19th-century additions, and substantially altered in 1987.

The main house is constructed with rendered walls over a stone-rubble ground floor and cob first floor to the front elevation, and cob on a stone-rubble plinth at the rear. The gable-ended roof is covered in Welsh slate with ridge cresting and finials. Chimneys are formed of 19th-century gault brick on the axial and end positions. The house stands two storeys tall with a rear wing of one storey and attic, and a one-storey lean-to outshut at the rear right end (rebuilt in 1987, replacing a 19th-century structure).

The plan appears to derive from a 17th-century three-room layout facing south. The hall occupies the centre with its axial stack to the right; to the left sits an entrance hall with staircase and an end room with integral end stack; to the right of the hall is a former kitchen with integral end stack and formerly a front doorway at its right-hand end. A probable 18th-century wing projects from the rear of the left-hand end. Evidence suggests the original 17th-century plan may have consisted of a hall to the left with a lateral stack and a smaller room to its right, extended at a later date by an additional room at the right-hand end. The current entrance-staircase hall appears to have been created from a larger room, as indicated by a truncated integral lateral stack to the front into which a 19th-century doorway was inserted.

The front elevation is irregularly fenestrated with four first-floor windows and five ground-floor windows. These are mostly boxed margin-light sash windows with stone cills, predominantly of the late 19th century, though three are late 20th-century insertions from 1987. The left-hand ground-floor window replaces a former plank door (formerly serving a small implement shed); the right-hand ground-floor window replaces another doorway; and the second window from the left is an insertion. The entrance lies between the second and third windows from the left and retains a 19th-century plank door. A ground-floor 19th-century margin-light sash window is positioned in the left-hand gable end, and a segmental-headed four-pane window lights the ground floor of the rear wing's gable end.

An adjoining outbuilding at right-angles to the front of the left-hand end is of one storey with loft space. Its fenestration includes a first-floor small-paned two-light wooden casement to the right with wooden cill, a central ground-floor 20th-century metal casement with wooden lintel and brick reveals, and a 19th-century three-light ground-floor wooden casement to the left with wooden lintel (this formerly served as a doorway, evident from straight joints inside). An old plank door to the right retains its pegged wooden frame and wooden lintel. The outbuilding has a stone ground floor and cob first floor; it has been partly rebuilt and enlarged in stone rubble with gable-ended corrugated-iron roofs.

A second one-storey 19th-century outbuilding adjoins the front gable end and now serves as a garage.

The front garden is enclosed by low uncoursed stone-rubble walls with rounded coping. A gateway opposite the front door of the house features a 19th-century cast-iron gate hung between square stone gate piers crowned with pyramidal caps.

The interior of the main house contains several features of interest. The hall retains a moulded ceiling cross beam positioned in front of the stack, featuring ovolo moulding and two cavetto mouldings, with the plaster ceiling lower to the right-hand side. A picture rail runs around the hall, and a cupboard in the front wall has a two-panelled door. The window jambs of the front window continue down to floor level.

The right-hand ground-floor room (former kitchen) preserves an open stone fireplace with a chamfered wooden lintel and an integral bread oven fitted with a 19th-century cast-iron door inscribed "Young and Son, Barnstaple". To the right of the fireplace stands a cream hob set into the wall.

The entrance hall features a 19th-century tiled floor and 19th-century stairs with turned balusters. Four-panelled doors of 19th-century date are found throughout the ground floor.

The 17th-century roof structure consists of trusses with straight principal rafters and lap-jointed collars. The outbuilding interior preserves a cobbled floor to the rear and a four-bay roof with trusses of principal rafters and pegged halved lap-jointed collars; the loft floor has been removed. Late 19th-century scissor trusses are present in the lower addition to the front of the outbuilding.