Powlesland Farmhouse

Powlesland Farmhouse is an early 16th-century farmhouse of longhouse type, substantially modernised in the later 16th and 17th centuries. It stands on the south-eastern side of a gentle hillslope near South Tawton on Dartmoor.

The building is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings with granite chimney stacks and a thatched roof. The shippon or stable end has been re-roofed with corrugated iron. The house follows a T-plan, with the main block facing south-east and arranged as a three-room-and-through-passage plan. To the north-eastern end stands an inner room (parlour) with a disused gable-end stack and a mid-17th-century stair rising to the rear. The hall has a front lateral stack and projects forward from the passage and shippon section, with its window and inner room window brought flush with the front of the stack. A winder stair once rose from the hall to its rear lower end, now blocked by 20th-century stairs. The shippon, still in agricultural use, has a hayloft above. An unheated dairy block projects at right angles to the rear of the hall and inner room, with an integral outshot on the hall side.

The roof structure reveals that the early 16th-century house was open to the roof, divided by low partitions at least to the passage, and heated by an open hearth fire. The inner room may have been floored from the beginning, or in the mid-16th century. The hall fireplace was inserted in the mid or late 16th century, and around the same time a passage chamber was constructed, jettying into the lower end of the hall. In the mid-17th century, the house underwent thorough refurbishment across closely-spaced building phases: the hall and inner room front was thrown out a short distance, the hall floored over, the inner room stair built, and the dairy block with its outshot added. Thereafter the hall functioned as the kitchen and the inner room as the parlour, with the present kitchen in the dairy. The shippon or stables was re-roofed in the late 17th to early 18th century. The house has undergone only superficial alteration since. It is two storeys with a 20th-century outshot on the right end.

The exterior shows a regular but asymmetrical three-window front with 20th-century casements with glazing bars; the first-floor casements are set in gabled half-dormers. A passage front doorway is positioned left of centre, containing a 20th-century door behind a contemporary gabled porch. The stable section to the left displays two doorways with a small window between and a hayloft loading hatch above the left doorway. The roof is gable-ended.

Interior features are extensive. On the lower shippon or stables side of the passage, a soffit-chamfered and step-stopped beam is half-buried in the crosswall. The hall-passage partition dates to the late 16th century and consists of an oak plank-and-muntin screen with raking step stops. Contemporaneously, the passage chamber was jettied into the hall with an oak close-studded first-floor crosswall. The large hall fireplace is granite ashlar with a hollow-chamfered surround and a tiny fire window on its left side, now opening to the bay window. The upper end cob crosswall includes a cream oven above an ancient oak bench. The mid-17th-century axial beam is soffit-chamfered with exaggerated scroll stops. A mid-17th-century oak doorframe from the hall to the inner room parlour is ovolo-moulded with bar-roll stops. The inner room fireplace is blocked with a plain-joist ceiling. A mid-17th-century straight-flight stair is concealed from the room by an oak plank-and-muntin screen with ovolo-moulded muntins and bar-roll stops, matching the surrounds to doorways from its landing. A doorway from the rear of the hall leads to the dairy, which has a 17th-century crank-headed doorframe to the outshot. Several old plank doors survive throughout the house, two of the earliest held together by projecting oak pegs. The stable or shippon contains a plain soffit-chamfered crossbeam of probable late 17th to early 18th-century date, contemporary with the A-frame roof of pegged lap-jointed construction with a collar above the hayloft. The original roof over the passage and hall is carried on large side-pegged jointed cruck trusses with cambered collars, smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The roof over the inner room parlour is inaccessible. The roof over the dairy is carried on a side-pegged jointed cruck.

Powlesland is an attractive late medieval farmhouse retaining good 16th and 17th-century features. E Lega-Weekes recorded mouldings from 17th-century oak-mullioned windows before their removal and sketched a shoulder-headed oak doorframe, documented in Neighbours of North Wyke, Part II, Transactions of the Devon Association 34 (1902), with illustrations facing pages 599 and 647. The house remains occupied by the Powlesland family.