Powdermills Farmhouse And Attached Former Cooperage And Rear Farm Building And Front Garden Walls

DARTMOOR FOREST

SX 67 NW Powdermills Farmhouse and attached for 1539/11/10008 mer cooperage, rear farm building, and 13-DEC-01 front garden walls

GV II

Manager's house and cooperage, now offices. c1844, restored c1990. Granite rubble with dressed granite jambs and lintels over openings, house rendered early C20 to front and sides, gabled slate roof with rendered brick and stacks.

PLAN: Double-depth plan house, with rectangular single-room cooperage to right, connected by short link. Former farm building to rear of house.

EXTERIOR: 2 storey; 3-window range house. South elevation has central mid-C20 porch with half-glazed door, and 6/6-pane hornless sashes, with central first-floor 3/6-pane sash. Rear has off-centre blocked doorway, in front of 6-panelled door with overlight. Tall 6/6-pane sash to the stair, with small lights each side, and outer 6/6-pane sashes (late C20 window to right). 2-storey farm building has a hipped roof to front; gabled to rear with lateral stone stack, a stone flag bridge to a rear first floor doorway, now a window and late C20 replacement windows. Late C20 rendered extension to left (west) with slate roof.

A single storey range with inserted openings connects the house to a 2 storey; 10-window cooperage, with almost-square ground-floor windows, and 4 first-floor windows, the outer ones larger. E gable has right-hand doorway. Rear altered, with remains of similar ground-floor fenestration, and inserted garage doors.

INTERIOR: House has a central dogleg stair and original joinery with moulded architraves and panelled doors. Cooperage has large fireplace at each end; floor and roof renewed c1990.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Attached rubble wall to house encloses front garden.

HISTORY: The gunpowder works was operating by 1846, supplying mining and quarrying interests, and closed in 1897. The gunpowder factory and its associated grouping of housing and workshops is a prominent feature of the moorland landscape east of Lydford. It is also one of the best-preserved water-driven powder works of the period, the remains of the works to the north being a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Although the workers' housing has been too altered to merit listing, the manager's house is the best surviving example associated with this industry after Ponsanooth in Cornwall: the attached cooperage, distinguished by its fenestration and one of the key functional buildings of a powder works where powder barrels were stored and manufactured, is the best surviving example associated with this industry in England.

(Pye, A R and Robinson R, An Archaeological Survey of the Gunpowder Factory at Powdermills Farm, Postbridge, Devon, Exeter Museums Archaeological Field Unit, 1990; Harris, H, The Industrial Archaeology of Dartmoor, 1986)