Teigncombe Farmhouse Including Garden Walls To North-East

Teigncombe Farmhouse, including garden walls to north-east

This is a farmhouse of early or mid 16th-century date with major alterations from the 17th century and significant modernisation around 1924. The walls are constructed of granite stone rubble with large dressed granite quoins, plastered on the front elevation. Granite stacks are present throughout, retaining their original granite ashlar chimney shafts. The roof is now slated, though it was thatched until around 1924.

The house is L-shaped and faces north-east, built down a slope. It follows a three-room-and-through-passage plan with the inner room positioned at the uphill north-western end. The original house was open to the roof, at least in the hall, and was probably heated by an open hearth fire. By the end of the 17th century the house had been floored throughout. It is possible, though unproven, that it was originally built as a Dartmoor longhouse. Around the middle or end of the 17th century an end fireplace was built at the lower end, from which point the lower end room became clearly domestic in use. The hall contains an axial stack backing onto the passage, while the inner room has an end stack with a newel stair alongside. A dairy block was probably added to the rear of the inner room in the 18th century, and in the 20th century the rear of the passage was blocked by the insertion of a bathroom into what appears to have been a former porch. The house is now two storeys throughout.

The front elevation is irregular with five windows of various 19th and 20th-century casements. The windows at the left end contain small rectangular panes of leaded glass, whilst the two first-floor windows at the right end contain mostly diamond panes of leaded glass; the remainder have glazing bars. The front passage doorway, positioned left of centre, contains a late 19th or early 20th-century door, as does the inserted doorway to the inner room at the right end. The roof is gable-ended. A newel stair projects slightly from the right end, and the left end wall contains a presumed 17th-century two-light granite window with a chamfered mullion. The rear elevation, facing south-west, contains few windows and shows no obvious signs of blocked openings.

The interior retains surprisingly plain early features where exposed. The lower end room has a granite fireplace with a replacement lintel; the crossbeam has a slight soffit chamfer with run-out stops, though its true date is uncertain. The hall fireplace has a granite ashlar back in the passage with a soffit-chamfered cornice, though the actual fireplace is now blocked by a 20th-century grate. The hall crossbeam is boxed in, and the upper end oak plank-and-muntin screen is plastered over on this side; only the plain-finished reverse is exposed in the inner room. The inner room contains a plain chamfered crossbeam, and the fireplace is entirely granite with a chamfered surround. A flight of stone newel stairs rises alongside. The joinery detail is of 19th and 20th-century date.

The roof is essentially a replacement construction of around 1924. Only the truss at the upper end of the hall survives, with its lower part buried within a first-floor partition. This truss is probably 16th-century in date and has a cranked collar. It is smoke-blackened on the hall side, which indicates an original open hall-house heated by an open hearth fire.

The small front garden is enclosed by late 19th-century low granite rubble boundary walls.