Higher Shilstone Farmhouse Including Stables And Garden Walls Adjoining To South

Higher Shilstone is a Dartmoor longhouse farmhouse with an adjoining stable block. The main house dates from the late 15th to early 16th century, with major later 16th- and 17th-century improvements, including one phase dated 1656. Only minor subsequent modernisations have been made. The stable is late 17th or 18th century.

The building is constructed of large coursed blocks of granite ashlar on massive boulder footings. Different building phases are apparent in the masonry, the earliest appearing to be of massive ashlar blocks. There is some granite stone rubble patching and cob wall topping. Both granite stacks have granite ashlar chimney shafts. The roof is thatched, though some at the rear has been replaced by corrugated iron. The stable block is granite stone rubble with massive, roughly-shaped quoins and a corrugated iron roof (formerly thatched).

Plan and Development

This house has a long and complex structural history. The main block is a three-room-and-through-passage plan Dartmoor longhouse built down the hillslope and facing south-south-east. The inner room is terraced into the hillside at the left (west) end. Originally the house was open to the roof, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. There may have been a full-height crosswall this early on the lower side of the passage, since there is no trace of smoke-blackening in the shippon roof.

The house was progressively floored over and chimney stacks were added in the later 16th and 17th centuries. The hall has an axial stack backing onto the passage, and the inner room has a projecting gable-end stack. There is a one-room plan unheated rear block projecting at right angles to the rear of the hall. By the late 17th century, the plan had evolved to include a parlour in the inner room and a kitchen in the hall. The stair was in the rear block off the upper end of the hall. The rear block was probably a dairy, pantry and cider store. The upper end of the shippon is partitioned off from the rest, though the date of this alteration is unclear. The stables were added in the late 17th or 18th century, projecting forwards at right angles from the right (eastern) end and slightly overlapping it. The house is two storeys.

Exterior

The front elevation is regular but not symmetrical, with three windows, all 17th-century granite windows with chamfered mullions: four lights with hoodmoulds on the ground floor and three lights on the first floor. They contain rectangular panes of leaded glass. The passage front doorway is left of centre. It is round-headed with a broad bead-moulded surround and lugged spandrels enriched with carved oak leaves. The labels of the hoodmould are carved with rosettes, and immediately above is the datestone inscribed "RT 1656". The studded plank door may be that old.

Alongside to the right, the cow door is a plainer version of the main doorway: round-headed with chamfered surround and plain hood. To the right of this is a flight of external stone steps leading to a hayloft loading hatch, and the right end is covered by the stables. The main roof is gable-ended to the left and half-hipped to the right. The right end (to the shippon) has a dung hatch and hayloft loading hatch above, and a blocked drain hole. Each side wall includes blocked slit windows.

The rear passage doorway is a rounded segmental arch with chamfered surround. The rear block is more rubbly than the main block. Its end wall contains two ground-floor two-light and one first-floor three-light 17th-century granite-mullioned windows, all containing 20th-century glass. The uphill side wall has a blocked stair window. The roof is half-hipped.

Interior

The interior is of exceptional quality, containing the work of all the main building phases and having had only superficial 19th- and 20th-century modernisations since. The through-passage widens from front to back because the hall stack is not set at right angles to the side walls. Beyond the stack there is a timber-framed partition to the hall. It contains a 19th-century panelled door and is clad, but there may be an oak plank-and-muntin screen here.

The hall fireplace is probably late 16th to early 17th century. It is now blocked but remains intact, built of granite ashlar with a chamfered lintel. The hall was floored in the 17th century. The crossbeam is soffit-chamfered, unstopped to the front but with crude scroll derivative stops to the rear. The granite rubble crosswall at the upper end of the hall contains a couple of cupboards; the oldest is very small with a plain oak surround and door.

The parlour beyond is larger than the hall. Here the fireplace is blocked by a late 19th- to early 20th-century grate, and the ceiling has been lowered so that no carpentry shows. There are a pair of 17th-century door-frames, both with chamfered surrounds and step stops, from the hall to the rear block. The left one still leads to the stairs, but those now present are 20th century. The first floor has plain carpentry and joinery detail.

The shippon has not been brought into domestic use. Besides the external cow door, there is also a doorway from the passage, which may be an original feature. Built of oak, it is a round-headed arch with chamfered surround and contains an old studded plank door. There is a secondary rubble crosswall near the upper end, and what is left of the hayloft has plain carpentry detail. The drain does not show, but the earth floor looks higher than it would have been.

The main block roof structure is late 15th to early 16th century from end to end. A truss has been removed or embedded in the rubble crosswall at the upper end of the hall. At the inner room parlour end there is a hip cruck, and over the hall a true raised cruck truss with a soffit-chamfered cambered collar. There is a plainer version over the shippon. The shippon roof is clean, but the rest is heavily smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire, including the purlins, common rafters, battens and underside of the original rye thatch. The rear block roofspace is inaccessible, but the base of a 17th-century A-frame truss shows.

Stable

The stable contains a pair of doorways with a small window to the left and a hayloft loading hatch over the right doorway, all containing plain 19th-century joinery, on the inner (west-facing) side. The roof is gable-ended, and the end wall contains a drain hole, dung hatch, and at the top, an owl hole. Inside, the hayloft is carried on roughly-finished crossbeams. The roof is carried on A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars, the truss nearest the house of heavier scantling than the other.

Setting

The rear passage door of the house leads out into a small service courtyard terraced into the hillslope, enclosed by a stone rubble wall and including a woodshed and pump house which contains a large granite trough. In front of the hall and inner room, a small garden is also terraced into the hillside and is enclosed by a low granite wall including a high proportion of squared blocks and with rounded ashlar coping along the right side. The space in front of the doorways (between the garden and stables) is laid with pitched cobbles.

Significance

Higher Shilstone is an outstanding Dartmoor longhouse. It is very attractively sited and, like many of the older moorland houses, tucked tightly into the hillslopes. It also forms a group with its associated 17th-century farmbuildings. It is remarkable that such a modestly-sized farmhouse should consistently be built to such a high standard, from its medieval roof to the 1656 front doorway. Moreover, it has had only very superficial modernisations since the 17th century and is therefore remarkably well-preserved. As early as 1935, R. H. Worth recognised the house as one of the finest surviving examples of the Dartmoor longhouse type. In short, it is a house of national importance.

Source: R. H. Worth, "The Dartmoor House", Transactions of the Plymouth Institution XVIII (1937), pp. 34–47.