Easton Court Hotel

The Easton Court Hotel is a building with origins in the 16th and 17th centuries, significantly modernised, enlarged, and converted to a hotel around 1920. It is constructed of granite stone rubble, with some areas plastered, and features granite stacks. The hall stack has a granite ashlar chimney shaft with moulded coping, while the roof is thatched, with slate covering outshots and an extension.

The original main block follows a three-room-and-through-passage plan, oriented to face south-east, and is built on a slight slope. A rear corner stack, likely from the 18th century but rebuilt in the 20th, is present. There is a large axial stack backing onto the passage and a projecting gable end stack, also probably of 18th-century date. It is possible the building was formerly a Dartmoor longhouse, although there is no definitive evidence. 19th and 20th-century outshots extend along the rear, and a modern staircase is located in an outshot to the rear of the hall. Newer hotel accommodation is housed in a block projecting at right angles to the rear of the service end room, built circa 1920. The house appears to have begun as an open hall house. Now it stands two storeys high throughout.

The front elevation has an irregular four-window arrangement featuring 20th-century casements with glazing bars. A 20th-century door is set back behind a gabled, thatched porch, with a rounded-head arch crafted from a single piece of granite and stone benches on either side, which may be earlier than the porch. The roof is gable-ended to the right and hipped to the left. The service end chimney shaft is of brick, possibly dating back to the 18th century, whilst the inner room chimney shaft is of 20th-century brick. The hotel extension has a regular four-window front with 20th-century casements and glazing bars.

Internal inspection was limited to the ground floor rooms. A rear passage doorway retains its 17th-century oak frame with an ovolo-moulded surround. The crossbeam in the service end room was replaced and the fireplace rebuilt in the early 20th century. Both the hall and inner room feature 17th-century plain soffit-chamfered crossbeams. The hall fireplace has hollow-chamfered granite jambs and a soffit-chamfered oak lintel (possibly a replacement). The inner room fireplace is a 20th-century rebuild. The roof was not inspected at the time of survey.