Welltown Farmhouse

Farmhouse, circa 1500 with extensive 17th-century alterations and additions

This building stands on an early site first mentioned in 1381 and was continuously occupied by the Attwell family (who took their name from the site) until about 1780. The Attwells rose to be gentry by the early 17th century and were an arms-bearing family of some importance in the locality, making their money through mining. The rise of the family is reflected in the elevation of the house to small manor-house quality in the early 17th century.

Construction and Materials

The house is built of granite rubble walls with a gable-ended roof of slate and asbestos slate at differing ridge heights and pitches. It has three stone stacks: one axial to the left-hand range of granite ashlar with a tapering granite cap which has a moulded rim; one axial to the right-hand range, partly rendered with dripcourses; and at the right gable-end a late 20th-century rebuilt stack.

Plan Development

The plan development is complex and open to various interpretations. The house is presently T-shaped. The stem of the 'T' consists of a shippon to the left with independent access and a large room to its right heated by a stack axial to the shippon, with a staircase and entrance lobby to its right. The range at right angles is entered through this lobby and also has an external doorway in its front gable end. Both doors lead into a room heated by an axial fireplace, and to the right of this room is a small dairy. Behind these two rooms is a large room extending the width of them both with a fireplace at its right-hand end. To the rear of this room is a small unheated room to the left and a staircase to the right.

Evidence of a smoke-blackened truss above the principal room in the stem of the 'T' indicates this range is the earliest and this room was an open hall with central hearth. The rear wall is continuous across the shippon, suggesting this was the original lower end with a passage adjoining the hall by whose front door the shippon is now entered. However, it is uncertain whether this has always been a shippon since on its rear wall it has a granite mullion window, apparently in situ, and documentary evidence and the lack of an obvious kitchen in the house suggest there may have been a fireplace in this room. What, if anything, originally existed at the higher end of the hall is unclear due to the substantial 17th-century addition.

The initials carved on the hall fireplace are of Robert and Grace Attwell who occupied the house from the late 16th to the early 17th century. This gives an approximate date to the flooring of the hall and remodelling of the house and, by inference from a similar style fireplace in the new range, at least part of the addition at the higher end. This addition took the form of a cross wing, but whether it dates completely from the early 17th century or whether it developed in stages throughout that century is more conjectural.

The two larger heated rooms, from their features, would appear to be coeval but their purpose is unclear. The larger room to the rear has a higher quality fireplace but it has an early oven which the plain fireplace in the front room does not have. Possibly the rear room adopted the function of hall and the original hall became a parlour, but there is still no obvious kitchen. Another puzzling factor is that the roof over these two rooms in the wing runs in opposite directions. The small service room and staircase at the rear of the larger room, if not contemporary, are not later than mid 17th century and the stairs are a transitional form from newel to framed staircase. Probably the most recent part of the house is the dairy adjoining the principal front room of the wing but this is unlikely to be later than late 17th century.

On the first floor, until the earlier 20th century there was no access from one half of the house to the other, suggesting that an early staircase must have existed in the original range when it was floored, but also raising questions of occupancy by a divided household. Modifications were made to the house in the 19th century when the lower end was probably partially rebuilt and converted to a shippon with the passage removed and access to the hall blocked. A new front door was inserted at the higher end of the hall and a small entrance lobby created with a framed staircase inserted at the rear. Otherwise the plan remains unaltered since the 17th century.

Exterior

The house is two storeys with an asymmetrical three-window front. The shippon to the left is slightly recessed and there is a projecting gabled wing to right. The central section has a later 19th-century four-pane sash on each floor with a small single-light early 20th-century casement to the right on the first floor and an open-fronted 19th-century porch below with 19th-century plank door behind. The shippon has a plank door at its right end with a loading door above and window to the left.

The wing has two late 20th-century casements with glazing bars on its inner face and one on the first floor of its gable end. Below is a 19th-century gabled porch with 20th-century plank and glazed door. At the right-hand side of the gable the roof extends in a catslide over the dairy which has a single-light window with chamfered granite frame on its front wall.

The rear elevation has two three-light circa early 17th-century hollow-chamfered granite mullion windows with hoodmoulds on the ground floor. The right-hand one has been blocked. There is a small 19th-century stair-light with small panes at left-hand end on the first floor. The two-window inner face of the wing has late 20th-century small-paned two-light casements except for the ground floor window to the right which is larger with an early 20th-century casement which has been inserted into a mullion window frame and still has a hoodmould above. The window to its left also shows signs of granite framing.

The opposite outer face of the wing, forming the right-hand end of the house, has a gable to the right with catslide dairy roof to the left. The right-hand window, at an intermediate level for the stairs, has chamfered granite framing. Below to its left is a single granite-framed light. At the centre on the ground floor is a three-light granite mullion window whose central mullion has been removed. The window above it—a two-light 20th-century small-paned casement—also has granite framing. The dairy window to the left on the ground floor is probably an 18th-century two-light with central square-section mullion and no glass. This side of the house is built into the bank with its lower windows at ground level.

Interior

The interior has good features from various periods, some of a high quality. The inserted fireplace in the hall is of granite with hollow and roll moulding to jambs and lintel which is slightly cambered and has the roll moulding rising in a raised semi-circle with the initials "R.A. G.A." carved in high relief. An almost identical fireplace survives in the larger room of the wing but with a stylised plant instead of initials in the semi-circle.

The room has two 17th-century square-headed wooden doorframes with ovolo-mould leading to the adjoining service room and staircase. The staircase has stone treads for the first flight, then wood, rising around a solid core, and with a cupboard below lit by a small granite-framed window. The front room of the wing has a square-headed hollow-chamfered granite fireplace. Adjoining it to the left is a chamfered four-centred granite doorway and the room is entered from the lobby by a four-centred granite doorway with roll moulding and foliage carved spandrels rebated in a roll-moulded frame.

The three principal first-floor rooms all have a granite-framed 17th-century fireplace, each different, and the one at the rear of the wing has a similar carved lintel to the room below. There is a 17th-century doorframe leading from the chamber above the hall into that above the shippon.

Roof

Over the original hall one smoke-blackened truss survives, of heavy scantling and well-finished, with curved morticed collar, diagonal ridge, morticed apex and trenched purlins. Over the larger rear room in the cross wing two 17th-century fairly rough trusses survive with mortices for threaded purlins and curved collars pegged and set slightly into the trusses.

Significance

The importance of this house lies in a combination of the survival of the medieval fabric (unusual in West Devon) and the remodelling of the building to small manor-house quality with a number of good 17th-century features. Equally remarkable is the fact that the unusual plan-form has been virtually unaltered since the 17th century with no later additions.