Torhill Farmhouse

Torhill Farmhouse is an early 16th-century farmhouse, significantly altered in the later 16th and 17th centuries, and modernized in the early 19th century and again around 1965. The construction consists of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone stacks topped with plastered 19th-century and 20th-century brickwork. The roof is thatched, with corrugated iron and asbestos sheeting covering the outshots.

The house originally had a three-room-and-through-passage plan, facing east and built across a gentle hillslope. A small inner room at the north end has a projecting end stack. The hall features an axial stack projecting into the passage and a front-projecting window bay, while the service end room has an end kitchen stack. A stair turret projecting to the rear of the hall was rebuilt around 1965. The original 16th-century house was largely open to the roof and initially heated by an open hearth fire. The inner room might have been floored from the outset, although this could not be confirmed during the survey. Later, in the 16th and 17th centuries, stacks were added and the house was progressively floored over, with the inner room being refurbished as a parlour in the early 19th century.

The farmhouse is two stories high with rebuilt outshots at the rear. The front facade has an asymmetrical arrangement of 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars, with a full-height bay breaking forward to accommodate the hall and chamber windows. The front passage doorway, located slightly left of centre, now has a 20th-century part-glazed door. The roof is gable-ended.

Internally, features from all the main building phases are present. The rear passage doorway retains a likely original oak round-headed doorframe. The service end room was rebuilt in the mid or late 17th century as a kitchen. It contains an axial beam with a soffit-chamfered finish and straight cut stops, mirroring the finish on the oak lintel of the granite fireplace. The large hall fireplace is from the late 16th century, featuring granite ashlar, an oak lintel, and a chamfered surround. The hall was likely floored at a slightly later date, also displaying an axial beam with a soffit-chamfered finish and step stops. The inner room parlour contains an early 19th-century cupboard with shaped shelves, glazed doors, and an eared architrave, with a blocked 20th-century grate in the fireplace. The original roof structure remains intact, with side-pegged jointed cruck trusses of large scantling over the hall, passage, and inner room, all thoroughly smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The oak-framed hall-inner room crosswall shows sooting, though the roof over the inner room was not accessible for inspection. This is a well-preserved, multi-phase Devon farmhouse and further 16th or 17th-century features may be concealed behind later plaster.