Chapple Farmhouse Including Garden Railings Adjoining To South

Chapple Farmhouse including garden railings adjoining to south

Farmhouse, 17th century or earlier, thoroughly refurbished and somewhat rearranged in the mid-19th century. Plastered granite stone rubble with granite stacks; two stacks have granite ashlar chimney shafts and one has been replaced with plastered brick. Slate roof (formerly thatch, though the principal room section has probably been slated since the mid-19th century); corrugated iron roof to outshots. The building is a long five-room plan structure built across a hillslope facing south.

The house as it now stands reflects the mid-19th-century rearrangement. At the left (west) end is an unheated service room containing a woodstore. The two rooms to the right of this are the principal rooms, with an entrance hall and main stair between them rising against the rear wall. The left end contains two service rooms separated by a cross passage with the service stair rising against the rear wall. An axial stack between the principal rooms and service rooms serves back-to-back fireplaces. Another main room has an axial stack backing onto the woodstore, and the end room of the service rooms has a gable end stack.

The original house likely dates to the 17th century or earlier and probably had a three-room-and-through-passage plan, possibly a Dartmoor longhouse. However, the mid-19th-century refurbishment was so extensive that insufficient early fabric is now exposed to determine the former layout. The structure is two storeys with 19th-century outshots across the rear.

The exterior features an eight-window front in two sections. The woodstore at the left end has no window, only a 19th-century plank door. The principal rooms have a symmetrical three-window section around a central doorway, with 19th-century 16-pane sashes under low segmental arches. The service end has a nearly symmetrical five-window arrangement (only two on the ground floor) with a central doorway. These windows are 19th and 20th-century casements; the oldest contain rectangular panes of leaded glass, others have glazing bars. Both doorways contain 19th-century part-glazed six-panel doors behind 20th-century gabled rustic timber porches. The roof is gable-ended with the principal room end pitched lower than the service end. A 19th-century service door is visible to the rear near the end wall, with an attractive continuous outshot occupying the rest.

The interior predominantly shows the result of mid-19th-century refurbishment, including most joinery detail. The oldest fabric is exposed in the inner of the principal rooms, where a 17th-century crossbeam is soffit-chamfered with straight cut stops. The contemporary fireplace is built of granite ashlar with a hollow-chamfered surround, though half is blocked by a 19th-century oven housing inserted with the kitchen fireplace behind it. Alongside is a 19th-century cream oven. The kitchen fireplace has a plain chamfered oak lintel, and the crossbeams of the service rooms are similarly finished. The roof is largely inaccessible. The truss over the woodstore, however, is a late 17th or early 18th-century A-frame with pegged and spiked lap-jointed collar. The eastern gable end shows that the roof has been raised at some time.

From the right end of the front, a low granite wall with 19th-century cast iron railings on top extends southwards towards the nearby barn and includes a gateway flanked by monolithic square-section gate posts with rounded heads containing a 19th-century wrought iron gate. Chapple Farmhouse is part of an attractive group of listed buildings in a hamlet which also includes West Chapple. Although most of what can be seen dates to the mid-19th century, the farmhouse is evidently much older, with older features probably hidden behind 19th-century plaster.