Combe Farmhouse

COMBE FARMHOUSE

A farmhouse of early 16th-century date with major 17th-century improvements, modernised around 1960. Originally a Dartmoor longhouse type, it is built of plastered cob on stone rubble footings with granite and cob stacks. The granite stack to the hall retains its original granite ashlar chimneyshaft. The roof is thatched.

The building is L-shaped, with the main block facing north-west and built down the hillslope. It follows a 4-room-and-through-passage plan. At the uphill, south-west end stands the inner room parlour with an end stack serving ground and first floor rooms. The hall has an axial stack backing onto the passage. Around 1960, the passage front doorway was blocked and the shippon end was converted to two rooms, the inner room having a projecting front lateral stack of that date. A new front doorway was inserted into the left end room at the same time. A kitchen block projects forward at right angles from the inner room, slightly overlapping the hall, and features a large gable-end stack.

The original early 16th-century house was open to the roof from end to end, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. Evidence of the gradual insertion of fireplaces and flooring of rooms was removed during a major mid-17th-century refurbishment. The hall and inner room fireplaces, ceiling beams and the kitchen block all appear to result from a single building phase around that time. The shippon end shows nothing earlier than around 1960.

The house is two storeys throughout. The main block has a two-window front of 20th-century casements without glazing bars, with similar windows to the rear. The single front ground floor window blocks the former passage doorway. The 1960 doorway to the converted shippon contains a contemporary door behind a gabled porch. The main roof is hipped to the left and half-hipped to the right. The kitchen block is gable-ended and heavily buttressed.

Interior features of mid-17th-century date are considerable. The hall and inner room are separated by a cob crosswall. The hall fireplace is built of Cocktree ashlar, now lined with 20th-century stone, and has a soffit-moulded oak lintel with run-out stops. The axial beam features double ovolo mouldings with bar run-out stops and plain joists. The contemporary oak doorframe from hall to inner room has an ovolo-moulded surround with exaggerated scroll stops. The inner room parlour fireplace has an ogee-moulded oak lintel with step stops; a date of 1701 inscribed on the lintel is evidently secondary. A smaller version of the fireplace exists above. The parlour ceiling is carried on half beams at each end, both with filleted ogee mouldings and bar run-out stops. In the kitchen, the fireplace is blocked and the crossbeam is soffit-chamfered with one scroll stop exposed. The roof over this block is carried on two mid-17th-century A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars. An 18th-century cupboard with panelled doors stands in the parlour, and a first floor doorframe, possibly 17th or 18th century, features a scratch-moulded, almost reeded, surround.

The roof over the inner room, hall and passage is late medieval. Three face-pegged jointed crucks with cambered collars and small triangular yokes of Alcock's apex type L1 are present. The truss over the hall is of larger scantling and has chamfered arch braces, though part of it has been cut through to accommodate 20th-century stairs. All three trusses and the hip cruck are heavily smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The rest of the roof structure was replaced around 1960.