Snowdrops

SX 6493 - 6593 SOUTH TAWTON SOUTH ZEAL

8/245 Snowdrops

GV II

House, once 2 cottages but originally a single house. Early C16 with major later C16 and C17 improvements, split into 2 cottages in C18 or C19 and reunited in C20, modernised circa 1980. Plastered granite stone rubble with some cob; granite stacks, one disused the other with its original granite ashlar chimneyshaft now plastered; slate roof, formerly thatch. Plan and development: 2-room-and-through-passage plan house built parallel to but set back a short distance from the street and facing south-west. The right room is the service end room and has an end kitchen stack backing onto the adjoining house, Buttercup Cottage (q.v). The hall to right has an axial stack backing onto tile passage. There is no inner room and the house appears to occupy the full width of its historic burgage plot. Outshots across the rear were rebuilt circa 1980 but section behind hall seems to include some early walling but it cannot be proved to be original. The original main block was open to the roof from end to end, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. The hall fireplace was probably inserted in the late C16, the kitchen fireplace in the C17. Flooring the service end of indeterminate date. The hall was floored in the early or mid C17. Now 2 storeys with late C19 service outshot to front now used as a garage. Exterior: irregular 3-window front of C20 casements, the ground floor ones both circa 1986. Passage front doorway contains a C20 door behind a contemporary porch. Roof runs along the building between the adjoining houses. Interior: was thoroughly modernised circa 1980 but the historic structure was largely left intact. The hall fireplace is granite ashlar, hooded with granite corbels and includes a C19 oven. Crossbeam here is soffit-chamfered with step stops. Service end kitchen has a fireplace with replacement lintel and curious alcove behind a round-headed stone arch alongside. Kitchen crossbeam is roughly- finished. Original 4-bay roof carried on large side-pegged jointed cruck trusses with cambered collars and the whole carpentry structure is smoke-blackened from the open hearth fire. South Zeal is special being one of few medieval boroughs in Devon where a high proportion of its C16 and C17 houses still survive.

Listing NGR: SX6514793561