West Fingle Farmhouse

SX 79 SW DREWSTEIGNTON

5/76 West Fingle Farmhouse

II

Farmhouse. C16 and C17, renovated 1986. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings, lower end rebuilt with C20 concrete blocks; disused cob hall stack, lower end stack rebuilt with concrete blocks; thatch roof. Plan and development: L-shaped building. The main block faces north-west and is built down a gentle slope. It has a 3-room-and-through-passage plan with an unheated inner room uphill at the right end. Hall has an axial stack backing onto former through passage. Service end room has projecting end stack inserted or rebuilt in 1986. 1-room plan dairy block projecting forward at right angles in front of the inner room overlapping the hall and including the newel staircase from the upper end of the hall. Since no full internal inspection was available at the time of this survey the historic development of the house cannot be outlined here. Nevertheless it seems likely that the original house was some kind of open hall house, maybe heated by an open hearth fire. The hall fireplace was probably inserted in the late C16 - early C17 and the house progressively floored over between the mid C16 and mid C17. The dairy block is a C17 or C18 addition. It might have been a Dartmoor longhouse but any evidence for this has been removed in the thorough 1986 renovation (near complete rebuild) of this end. Now 2 storeys throughout. Exterior: on the front, inner room and most of the hall lies behind the dairy block. The rest includes a single C20 casement with glazing bars on each floor. The passage front doorway is boarded up at the time of survey. The rear also has C20 casements with glazing bars and passage rear doorway is blocked. Roof of main and dairy blocks are gable-ended. Interior: was not available for complete inspection at the time of this survey. However the hall has an upper end oak plank-and-muntin screen, the muntins chamfered with step stops high enough to accommodate an upper end bench below. The hall fireplace is blocked by a C19 grate. Crossbeam here has broad soffit-chamfers with large step stops. The lower passage partition has been removed and the service end crossbeams replaced by C20 RSJs. This section has an early-mid C17 roof of A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars and dovetail halvings. The rest of the roof and the dairy block were not inspected.

Listing NGR: SX7398391354