Totleigh Barton

Totleigh Barton is a house of early 16th-century origin with 17th-century alterations, originally built as a farmhouse. It stands on a very early moated site with medieval origins, though the complexity of its development remains partially unclear.

The building is constructed of plastered cob walls beneath a gable-ended thatch roof. It has projecting plastered rubble gable-end stacks with brick shafts and a plastered rubble and brick axial stack.

The plan is fundamentally composed of three rooms with a through passage and a small wing at the front, though its evolution is more complex than this description suggests. The main range comprises a lower end to the left with a very wide passage, beyond which is the hall, heated by a stack backing onto the passage. The inner room occupies the right end. The hall is notably deeper than it is long, and the lower room probably functioned as a parlour while the inner room likely served as a kitchen. The unusual width of the passage and the substantial depth of the house suggest significant 17th-century remodelling of the medieval structure, possibly involving the building out of the rear wall by several feet. If the original medieval house were divided only by low partitions, the room proportions could have been substantially altered in the 17th century, leaving little evidence of its earlier form. One hypothesis proposes that the room arrangement has been completely reversed, with the present wide passage being the original inner room and the present inner room originally having been the passage and lower room, now truncated. The wing's position in front of the passage suggests it may be a porch, though its proportions seem unusual and it contains an early window at ground floor level. Its first-floor room is heated. In the 19th or early 20th century, the lower left-hand end was divided lengthwise into two rooms and an outshut was added in front.

The exterior presents two storeys with an asymmetrical four-window front. A wing projects at the centre with a 19th or early 20th-century outshut to its left. Most windows date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and are casements of two and three lights. The first-floor window to the right of centre is a 17th-century three-light window with a chamfered wooden mullion. The ground-floor window to the front of the wing is an early 16th-century two-light wooden mullion window with four-centred heads and recessed spandrels. On the first floor, to the left-hand side of the wing, is a very small arched-head single-light window. The outshut has a plank door at its right-hand end. A 20th-century lean-to porch to the right has a part-glazed door.

Interior features include many internal walls and partitions retaining old lime plaster. The right-hand room contains an open fireplace with a rough wooden lintel and chamfered axial ceiling beams. The hall features a 17th-century doorframe to the right-hand room with chamfered and stopped wooden jambs. The fireplace, which has had its lintel replaced, retains hollow chamfered granite jambs. High on the wall to the right of the fireplace is a carved granite stone, possibly a candle holder. At the front of the wall between the hall and right-hand room is a hatch incorporating the cranked head to a wooden doorframe. The left-hand room has a fireplace with a chamfered and ogee-stopped wooden lintel. A steep flight of stone steps leads from the hall to the first-floor room of the wing, which contains a blocked 17th-century chamfered wooden mullion window in its front wall. This room has a fireplace with a corbelled wooden lintel.

The roof over the wing is a single truss with slightly curved feet and a cranked morticed collar. A similar unsmoke-blackened roof truss survives over the left-hand end of the house. Over the hall and higher end, the roof has been completely replaced in the 19th century and was probably raised at the same time.