Great Dunstone Farmhouse Including Gateposts, Mounting Block And Wall Surrounding Front Garden

Great Dunstone Farmhouse including Gateposts, Mounting Block and Wall Surrounding Front Garden

A farmhouse dating to the late 16th or early 17th century, built of granite rubble with a thatched roof. The building was enlarged with a porch, cartshed and lean-tos at the rear; the front additions are slated, while those at the rear are partly slated and partly covered with corrugated asbestos.

The house follows an unusual 2-room plan with through-passage, the left-hand room being the larger (probably the former hall). A notable feature is the gable-fireplace positioned at the upper end of the hall, which is highly unusual for Devon at this date. The building does not appear to have ever functioned as a longhouse. A large porch was added to the front, believed to have contained a wool chamber in the upper storey. At the rear, a large combined porch and stair turret, likely original to the building, is now hidden by added lean-tos.

Large stone chimneys rise from each gable: the left one is rendered with a tapered top, while the right one projects with offsets and has a plain top.

The front elevation presents two storeys with a 3-window arrangement. The windows are 19th-century casements with glazing-bars. The ground-storey windows have drip-stones; the left-hand window features an ovolo-moulded wood lintel with run-out stop. The porch, altered in the late 19th century, has a segmental arch of red brick to the outer doorway and a flat red brick arch to the window above. In the left-hand side-wall, beneath the eaves, are seven pigeon-holes with small slate perches in front of them. Family tradition records an external stone stair once stood to the left of the doorway, leading to the wool chamber. In the right-hand side-wall at second-storey level is a 2-light wood-mullioned window, probably of late 17th or early 18th-century date.

The ground-storey room to the right of the passage contains a fireplace with a chamfered and straight-cut stopped wood lintel; the right-hand side has been widened, with the stop cut away. An old wooden bench runs along the opposite wall. The upper-floor beams in both ground-storey rooms are chamfered with scroll-stops. The former outer doorway at the rear of the passage has a rectangular wood frame with hollow and ovolo mouldings and urn stops at the foot; the door displays heavy wrought-iron strap-hinges, possibly contemporary with the house, though the planks are of 19th-century renewal. At the stair-head is a pair of wood door-frames with flat heads, ovolo-moulded and fitted with scroll-stops; the right-hand doorway retains its original studded plank door with wrought-iron strap-hinges bearing fleur-de-lys terminals. The landing incorporates a doorway with a reset cranked wooden arch. Some 19th-century plank doors with strap-hinges survive in the bedrooms.

The roof structure is of exceptional quality and survives largely intact, comprising five clean trusses featuring three tiers of threaded purlins and a threaded ridge. All trusses have cranked collars: three employ tenoned joints with the principal rafters, while two (apparently of the same date) have shaped ends halved into the principals. Each truss includes short vertical struts tenoned into their feet and partly buried in the wall. Common rafters survive throughout. Both the common rafters and trusses bear gouged carpenter's marks; the trusses are numbered 1 to 5 from the left-hand end. None of the trusses bears partition marks, though the stone wall to the left of the through-passage rises straight up to the underside of truss No. 3. The roof-space above the lower end and passage appears always to have been lofted, whereas over the hall the bedroom was ceiled at the middle tier of purlins, just below the collar.

The garden wall, gateposts and mounting block date to probably the late 19th century. The wall is of granite rubble with an original iron railing on top. The monolithic granite gateposts have a mounting block on the garden side of the left post, leading to a small gate positioned on top of the wall. At the right-hand end of the garden stands a stone cartshed with a gabled roof.

An outbuilding standing close to the house and separately listed contains a fireplace and oven, and may have originally served as a detached kitchen.