Coombe Farmhouse

Coombe Farmhouse is a farmhouse of late 15th to early 16th-century origin with major later 16th and 17th-century improvements, renovated around 1970. It is listed at grade II*.

The main block is constructed of plastered granite stone rubble with some massive boulder footings at the upper end and some cob on the wall tops. The rear block is plastered cob on stone rubble footings. Stone rubble chimney stacks are topped with 20th-century brick, except for the hall which retains its original granite ashlar chimney shaft, extended in brick. The roof is thatched.

The building forms a low L-shaped plan, with the main block facing roughly north and built down the hillslope. It follows a three-room-and-through-passage arrangement with the inner room terraced into the uphill west end. This inner room is small and unheated, and was probably a dairy. The hall contains a large axial stack backing onto the passage. The long service end is now a single room but was divided into two rooms before around 1970. The inner room has a disused front lateral stack, and the end room has a gable end stack. An unheated single-room block, now the kitchen, projects at right angles from the rear of the inner room.

The original late medieval house appears to have been open to the roof, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. A hall fireplace was inserted in the mid or late 16th century, and the house was progressively floored over from the mid 16th through mid 17th centuries. While the house may originally have been a Dartmoor longhouse, there is no actual evidence for this in the lower end. The two rooms at the service end are probably the result of a mid 17th-century refurbishment when the end room received a stack and became a parlour. The room between it and the passage was apparently unheated until the 19th century. The hall probably served as the kitchen from the mid 17th century until around 1970. The rear block is an early or mid 17th-century extension whose former function is unknown, as there were then two unheated dairies or store rooms in the main block. The house is now two storeys throughout.

The exterior presents an irregular three-window front of late 19th and 20th-century casements, most with glazing bars. The first floor windows are half dormers. The front passage doorway is roughly central and contains a 19th-century plank door. The roof is half-hipped to the right and gable-ended to the left. The rear shows similar fenestration.

The interior contains several fine features. Above the upper side of the passage is an oak plank-and-muntin screen beyond the back of the hall. The hall fireplace is constructed of granite ashlar with a soffit-chamfered and step-stopped oak lintel. Its side oven was refurbished in the late 19th century. The passage chamber jetties into the hall flush with the face of the chimneybreast. The fireplace, oak screen and jettied chamber date from the mid or late 16th century. The stone rubble crosswall at the upper end of the hall is an original low partition and includes an oak shoulder-headed doorway. The wall is lined with 17th-century small field panelling above the level of the missing upper end bench. The window seat is lined with similar panelling. A cupboard in the front wall has an 18th-century fielded panel door. The probably mid 17th-century axial beam is roughly soffit-chamfered. The inner room joists are 20th-century replacements.

On the lower side of the passage is a stone rubble full-height crosswall. No beams are exposed in the lower end. The end fireplace is granite with a plain oak lintel. The other fireplace was rebuilt around 1970.

The rear block has no exposed beam on the ground floor. Its two-bay roof includes a true cruck roof truss. The roof between the lower passage and the inner room end is original. It contains three face-pegged jointed cruck trusses with cambered collars and small yokes at the apexes (Alcock's apex type L1). Alongside the rear passage doorway, one of the cruck feet shows down to ground level. The whole of this roof, including common rafters and the underside of the thatch, is smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The roof over the service end is inaccessible but the bases of straight principals are visible, suggesting replacement 17th-century A-frame trusses here.

Coombe Farmhouse is a good multi-phase Devon farmhouse with notable features from all periods of its historic development.