Woolladon Farmhouse

WOOLLADON FARMHOUSE

Farmhouse, dated 1666, with plastered cob walls and gable-ended thatch roof. The building has two brick gable end stacks and a rubble axial stack with dripcourse and brick shaft.

The house follows a three-room-and-through-passage plan with the lower end to the right, an integral rear outshut and stairs, a two-storey porch and adjoining outshut in front of the lower end of the hall. The lower and inner rooms are heated by gable end fireplaces, while the hall has a stack backing onto the passage. A small outshut at the front of the hall, likely also 17th century, may have originally functioned as a dairy or buttery. The rear outshut incorporates two small rooms, one behind the hall and one behind the inner room, which have since been blocked off with no access. The stairs are arranged in two parts, both reached from the hall: one flight rises behind the hall to reach chambers over the lower end and passage, while the other rises behind the inner room and gives access to chambers over the hall and inner room, as well as two small rooms on the first floor of the outshut. The plan survives unaltered with no post-17th-century additions.

Externally, the building is two storeys with a three-storey porch. The front is asymmetrical with five windows and a storeyed porch to the right of centre. The first floor retains original four-light chamfered wooden mullion windows with true mitres, except the first floor porch window which has moulded mullions. Above on the second floor is a two-light chamfered wooden mullion window. On the ground floor to the right of the porch is a 20th-century three-light wooden casement, with a similar window to the left. The hall window to the left of centre is an original four-light ovolo-moulded wooden mullion. To the left of the porch is an outshut with a three-light wooden mullion window. The gabled porch has a heavy square-headed wooden frame with broad chamfer and wooden seats on either side. The inner doorway features a square-headed double roll-moulded wooden frame with high stops and a contemporary oak studded door divided into two panels by moulded stiles. Inside the porch above the outer doorway, the date 1666 appears in high relief plasterwork with initials beside it.

The rear elevation has two full-height leantos, the one to the left of centre being shallower. The right-hand leanto has an original chamfered three-light wooden mullion window on the ground floor to the right, with a similar blocked window to the left and a 20th-century window lighting the stairs between them. A similar mullion window appears on the right end wall of the leanto. The left-hand leanto has a blocked three-light wooden mullion window in the angle where the leanto projects to its right. A passage rear doorway is positioned towards the left-hand end. Projecting from either end of the house rear wall are cob walls forming an enclosed courtyard, the fourth side completed by an outbuilding to the rear.

Internally, the original fireplace openings have been blocked or concealed, and no ceiling beams are exposed, suggesting the house may have been built with plastered ceilings by this late 17th-century date. Numerous 17th-century wooden chamfered doorframes survive from the passage to the hall, into the inner room and front outshut, and from the hall to the stairs. At the head of each stair is a double chamfered doorframe, with two more on either side at the head of the left-hand staircase. The right-hand staircase is a straight flight constructed of solid oak treads. The roof space was only partially accessible; timbers observed showed no smoke blackening. The trusses are straight principals, but further constructional features were not visible, though the 17th-century roof likely survives.

This is a particularly important house, being dated, as single-phase later 17th-century houses are unusual in Devon. It has been very little altered since the 17th century internally or externally, and preserves an interesting variation on the three-room-and-through-passage plan. It forms part of an unaltered farm complex.