Hole Farmhouse Including Garden Walls And Mounting Block Adjoining To North

Hole Farmhouse is a Grade I listed Dartmoor longhouse, one of the finest surviving examples of its type. It dates from the early 16th century with major improvements in the late 16th and 17th centuries, including work associated with the inscribed date of 1668. The building is constructed primarily of massive coursed blocks of granite ashlar, though much of the rear is built from granite stone rubble. It features granite chimney stacks (one with an ashlar shaft) and has a thatch roof over the main house with a corrugated-iron roof to the shippon.

The farmhouse is L-shaped, built down a hill slope and facing the farmyard to the north. The main block displays a 3-room-and-cross-passage plan typical of longhouses. At the western end, a small unheated inner room is terraced into the slope. The hall has an axial stack backing onto the wide passage, with a stair rising alongside and a turret projecting to the front. The passage appears to have originally been a through passage, though evidence of rear blocking is unclear in the masonry. A 2-storey porch projects in front of the passage. The eastern end contains a large shippon with a hayloft above, featuring its own cow door alongside the porch. A parlour wing with an end stack projects at right angles to the rear of the inner room, later subdivided into two rooms in the 20th century. The building is 2 storeys throughout.

The farmhouse originated as a late medieval open hall house heated by an open hearth fire. Through the late 16th and 17th centuries it was progressively floored over and fitted with fireplaces. It likely achieved its present form after the 1668 refurbishment, when the small inner room became a dairy and the hall a kitchen. The parlour wing provided the principal reception room with its own staircase (later replaced) leading to the principal bedroom above.

The exterior displays irregular fenestration. Only the inner room and its chamber above retain original 17th-century 4-light windows with chamfered granite mullions and a hoodmould; the remainder are 19th and 20th-century timber casements with glazing bars. The porch is gabled with a shoulder-headed outer arch inscribed with the date 1668 to its left. Wooden benches flank either side. The front passage doorway behind contains a contemporary oak door frame featuring a Tudor arch with bead-moulded surround and carved foliage in the spandrels, still holding the original studded oak plank door with oak lock housing. The cow door immediately to the left holds a 19th-century 2-flap door. Two slit windows illuminate the left side, with another lighting the hayloft above the cow door and a central hayloft loading hatch visible. The roof is hipped to the right and gable-ended to the left.

The impressive ashlar gable end of the shippon contains two slit windows to the hayloft, three to the shippon itself, and a blocked central drain hole in the rubble footings. The rear of the main block features a fixed pane window with rectangular leaded glass panes awkwardly set between hall and passage beneath a relieving arch. Slit windows pierce the rubble pitching behind the passage, with an irregular series of further slit windows and a 20th-century casement with glazing bars over the rear passage. The inner side of the parlour wing has a curious projection—possibly a disused garderobe or stair turret—adjoining the main block. This wing retains one 17th-century 4-light window with chamfered granite mullions; the remainder are 20th-century timber windows. The roof to the parlour wing is gable-ended, with eaves nearly at ground level to the rear.

The interior is well-preserved and demonstrates a house with a long and complex structural history. The oldest feature is the 2-bay roof spanning the hall and inner room, carried on face-pegged jointed crucks. Both sides are smoke-blackened, indicating an early 16th-century date when the building stood open to the roof and was heated by an open hearth fire. At the upper end of the hall stands an oak plank-and-muntin screen with chamfered muntins featuring step stops. The original doorway now leads to a 19th-century stair; a secondary doorway has been knocked through to the inner room or dairy. The inner room was probably floored over in the late 16th century and jettied out to fill the original truss, likely around the same time the hall fireplace was inserted with its accompanying newel stair alongside (featuring a crank-headed oak door frame). The large granite ashlar fireplace displays a chamfered surround and a side oven (renewed in the late 19th century) beneath the stairs. A contemporary passage chamber and a full-height stone rubble cross wall on the lower side towards the shippon date from this period, with the roof slung between this cross wall and the stack. In the passage, the back of the fireplace is of granite ashlar with chamfered plinth and cornice. A contemporary oak segmental-headed door frame connects passage to hall; beyond this, the cross wall continues in the same style as the fireplace back.

The parlour was probably added as part of the 1668 scheme, though it may be earlier. The doorway from the hall to the parlour contains an oak Tudor arch with chamfered surround. The parlour houses a tall but relatively narrow granite ashlar fireplace and a 3-bay ceiling carried on soffit-chamfered and step-stopped crossbeams. Its 2-bay roof comprises another face-pegged jointed cruck truss which is dark but shows no apparent smoke-blackening. The hall was floored over at or around the same time, with similarly finished crossbeams.

The shippon features a 5-bay ceiling of roughly finished crossbeams of indeterminate date. The cow stalls remain intact but date from the early 20th century, when the drain was also rebuilt in concrete. The roof underwent extensive repair at the same period, though much earlier roofing survives. It comprises 4 bays of pegged A-frame trusses, probably dating from the late 17th or 18th century.

A small garden in front of the hall and inner room is enclosed by a low boundary wall of granite stone rubble and includes an external mounting block.

Hole Farmhouse represents one of the best-preserved examples of the Dartmoor longhouse type, which are of national importance. It is remarkably complete in its form from circa 1668, when the house completed its evolution from late medieval origins. It is a particularly attractive Dartmoor building by virtue of its granite ashlar construction and stands as part of a group with its associated farm buildings, the finest of which are also listed.