Wrixhill Farmhouse

Wrixhill Farmhouse, Bratton Clovelly

A farmhouse of late 15th-century origin, extended and altered in approximately the early 17th century with a later 17th-century wing and further alterations in the 18th and 19th centuries. The walls are rendered cob, and the roof is asbestos slate, hipped at the left end and gabled to the right, with two axial stacks—the left-handed one of rubble and the right-hand one of dressed granite—and a rendered rubble lateral stack to the inner face of the rear wing.

The building shows a complex and unusual development of plan. Originally it comprised a three-room and through-passage arrangement with a lower room to the right. The two-bay hall had a central hearth and was open to the roof over the lower end, while the inner room was floored. The insertion of the two axial stacks, possibly in the early 17th century or not long after, created an unconventional layout: instead of maintaining the traditional three-room and through-passage plan, the stacks created just two rooms with a very wide passage onto which the stacks backed. The hall thus became occupied by the passage and lower stack, whilst the passage was absorbed into a large heated lower room. This may have become a kitchen, with the left-hand room becoming a parlour. The hall (now the passage) was ceiled at this stage, but the lower room, despite the insertion of a stack, remained uncovered—remarkably, according to the present owner's grandmother's recollection, it was still open to the roof within her living memory, a recollection supported by the absence of visible ceiling beams at this end and the presence only of 19th-century joinery. In the later 17th century, a one-room wing was added at the rear of the left-hand room, heated by a lateral stack, possibly intended as a kitchen. Remodelling in the 18th century is evidenced by several two-panel doors and a staircase with turned balusters leading from the lower room over the passage. In the 19th century, leanto additions were made at the right-hand end, at the rear of the main block, and against the inner face of the rear wing, forming a passage from the house to an outbuilding attached at the rear of the wing.

The building is of two storeys. The asymmetrical three-window front comprises 19th and early 20th-century two-light casements with glazing bars; the ground-floor right-hand window has three lights. An early 19th-century twenty-pane hornless sash window is positioned to the left on the ground floor. The first-floor right-hand window is set in a gabled dormer. A 20th-century panelled door occupies the centre with large sloping buttresses to either side and one towards the right-hand end. The wing projects to the rear of the left-hand side, with a small outbuilding attached at its rear parallel to the front block. This outbuilding has on its rear wall a shouldered-head wooden door frame with a studded oak door reused from the house. The outshuts at the rear of the house and side of the wing are under continuous catslide roofs.

The interior preserves four original roof trusses in slightly varying forms indicating the status of different ends of the building. The right-hand truss features threaded purlins and a diagonal threaded ridge with cranked collar. The two trusses over the higher end of the passage and over the hall are very similar, with curved collars. All these timbers are smoke-blackened; the principal rafters curve into the walls, though their full extent cannot be determined. Over the inner room part of an identical clean truss survives. An unusual feature of these trusses is that instead of being arch-braced, the principal rafters begin to curve on their inner face before meeting the collars, which continue the curve, creating a continuous form. In the approximately early 17th-century extension, the rear blade of the roof truss survives, clean, with threaded purlin. Over the rear wing, the roof trusses are probably original, consisting of substantial well-cut principal rafters with cambered collars lapped and pegged to the principals. The only other surviving feature from the original build is a wooden shouldered-head doorframe at the rear of the original passage. Both fireplaces in the main range are blocked; that in the rear wing has a chamfered wooden lintel. The only visible beams on the ground floor, in the passage end, are chamfered with no visible stops. On the first floor, a 17th-century square-headed wooden doorframe survives leading into the chamber over the inner room, chamfered with ogee stops. Adjoining it in the rear wall of the inner room where it joins the wing is a curved recess that probably housed a newel stair. In the passage are three 18th-century two-panel doors.

This house is an important survival in several respects. The form of its original roof trusses demonstrates it was a high-quality medieval house with a complex and unusual development traceable through features of various periods. The remarkable survival, within relatively recent memory, of one end of the house still open to the roof raises significant questions about the modernisation of Devon farmhouses in general. The house has been little altered since the 19th century and forms part of a traditional farm complex.