Lower Sessland Farmhouse Including Cob Walls Adjoining To North West And South West

Lower Sessland Farmhouse is a Dartmoor longhouse-type farmhouse of early 16th-century date with major improvements dating from the later 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries, the latest probably associated with 1715. The building is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with some large blocks of granite ashlar visible to the rear, local stone rubble stacks and chimneyshafts, and a thatch roof, much of which has been replaced with corrugated iron.

The house displays a T-shaped plan with the main block facing south-west and built down the hillslope. It has a five-room-and-through-passage longhouse-type plan. The two rooms at the uphill, north-western end are now used as a separate cottage. An axial stack sits between these two rooms, with another axial stack backing onto the former inner room, a small unheated space that was probably a former dairy. The hall contains a large axial stack backing onto the passage and a full-height projecting window bay to the rear, together with a winder stair to the passage chamber at the front lower end. A shippon with hayloft over occupies the lower side of the passage. A parlour block with a projecting gable-end stack extends forward at right angles to the front of the hall. To the rear of the hall, immediately left of the hall bay, stands an open-sided pumphouse with a chamber over, designed to resemble a two-storey porch, though the passage rear doorway lies to its left. The building is two storeys high.

The structural history is complex and long. The late medieval core was a three-room-and-through-passage longhouse, open to the roof and divided by low partitions, heated by an open hearth fire. The inner room was probably floored over in the mid-16th century. The hall fireplace was inserted with the passage chamber in the late 16th century. The hall was floored over in the mid-17th century with the building of the hall window bay. The pumphouse and parlour wing also date probably from the mid-17th century, with the parlour containing the main stair. The parlour was the main focus of an early 18th-century refurbishment. The shippon was refurbished in the mid-17th century. The two-room cottage at the upper end was not available for inspection but is thought to be 17th-century and said to contain the former kitchen.

The exterior presents an irregular three-window front to the left of the parlour block, with all windows being 19th and 20th-century casements with glazing bars. The passage front doorway immediately left of the parlour contains a 19th-century door behind a 20th-century porch. The roof is gable-ended. The rear elevation is more architecturally interesting. Surviving 19th-century plaster is incised as ashlar, and some windows retain parts of their 17th-century oak frames. The hall bay is gabled, as is the pumphouse, whose upper room is supported on roughly-squared monolithic granite posts. The pumphouse chamber shelters the well and contains a trough and lead pump; the trough is a 20th-century replacement, though the original granite trough lies nearby. The shippon cow door lies left of the passage rear doorway and contains a late 16th to early 17th-century oak frame with segmental head and chamfered surround. The hayloft loading hatch sits directly above. The shippon contains a series of tiny windows on each side, most now blocked but some retaining 16th or 17th-century oak frames. Two windows in the shippon end wall serve as the larger dung hatch and smaller ventilation openings. The drain remains in operation.

The interior is of high quality. The hall contains a large granite ashlar fireplace with hollow-chamfered surround. The mid-17th-century axial beam is soffit-chamfered with scroll-bar-scroll stops. The dairy has a plain axial beam of indeterminate date. The parlour is particularly fine. The mid-17th-century crossbeam has plain soffit chamfers. A contemporary stair rises along the wall of the main block, dividing at the top to the chambers over the hall and parlour. The stair is a closed-string stair with square newel posts and ball caps, a moulded flat handrail, and turned balusters. An early 18th-century chimneypiece with bolection surround and panelled chimneybreast stands in the parlour, with a full-height cupboard alongside to the right featuring panelled doors and a dentil cornice. Two other contemporary cupboards occupy the same room. Several two-panel doors throughout the house date from this period and, like the cupboard doors, are hung on H-hinges. The parlour roof A-frame, a two-bay structure, may be wholly early 18th-century, but its pegged lap-jointed collar with dovetail halvings must be mid-17th-century. The oak doorframe to the pumphouse chamber features a narrow ovolo-moulded surround with ramshead stops and contains a plank door with two applied panels, complete with all its original fittings including the wooden handle. The gable-end truss of the pumphouse chamber is a most unusual jointed cruck, with the tongue of each cruck post extending far up the principals and halved into them. The roof of the main block is carried on original side-pegged jointed crucks with cambered collars. All roof structure, including purlins, common rafters, and surviving thatch, is heavily smoke-blackened.

The shippon remains in use, though the doorway from the passage is now blocked. It has a cobbled floor with granite kerbs to the central drain and some granite slabs with holes for tethering posts. The roof, much mended but essentially original, comprises mid-17th-century A-frame trusses with dovetail-shaped pegged lap-jointed collars. From the front of the shippon, a high cob wall with tile coping projects forward and returns a short distance along the front of the garden. Another similar wall extends north-westwards from the left end, though the section between these two has been rebuilt in the 20th century.

A wrought-iron door knocker inscribed with the date 1715 and the initials of William and Mary Oxenham, from this farmhouse, is held in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, and may date the early 18th-century modernisation of the house. Lower Sessland is a very important multi-phase Devon farmhouse, both attractive and well-preserved, containing high-quality work from all major building phases. It is remarkable for its well-preserved shippon still in use and for its most unusual 17th-century pumphouse.