West Week Farmhouse

West Week Farmhouse is a substantial Dartmoor farmhouse, originally a longhouse, built on a gentle hillslope facing east-north-east. The main structure dates to the early 16th century, with major improvements in the later 16th and 17th centuries. A datestone of 1585 marks one phase of work. The shippon was renovated in the early 20th century, and the remainder of the building was modernised in 1986.

The building is constructed of granite stone rubble with parts in coursed blocks of granite ashlar. The rear is plastered, and the shippon end has cob wall tops. Granite stacks with granite ashlar chimneyshafts support the structure. The roof is slate (formerly thatch), with corrugated iron covering the shippon.

The main block follows a four-room-and-through-passage longhouse plan built down the slope. At the upper (northern) end is an inner room parlour with a gable-end stack and a former winder stair alongside it. A kitchen wing projects at right angles to the rear, containing a gable-end stack, with a chamber above that formerly shared access to the parlour stair. The hall features a front-projecting lateral stack with an adjacent projecting window bay. A wide passage now contains a 20th-century stair. At the front stands a two-storey porch with an upper room containing a garderobe. A small unheated dairy lies below the passage. At the lower (southern) end is the shippon, enlarged in the 18th or 19th century with a projecting rear wing. The entire shippon section was thoroughly refurbished and converted to a milking parlour in the early 20th century.

The original early 16th-century house was essentially the main block, open to the roof, divided by low partitions, and heated by an open hearth fire. By the mid-17th century it had been substantially transformed: the kitchen wing, porch, and fireplaces had been added, and all rooms floored. Dating the various building phases is problematic. The insertion of the hall fireplace appears contemporary with the hall bay and flooring of the hall—a combination usually separated by decades. Carved initials of William and Jane Battishill (he died in 1615) appear on the building; the same initials are on the porch. The inner room parlour end bears a 1585 datestone, very late for initial flooring but possibly dating its rebuilding and enlargement to the present parlour with heated chamber above. The kitchen block is considered more likely to be early or mid-17th century rather than late 16th century.

The building is two storeys with an irregular frontage showing a 2:1:1:2 window pattern. To the left of the porch, a two-window section contains 20th-century casements with glazing bars. A 20th-century cow door and a blocked third first-floor opening (probably a hayloft loading hatch) are also visible. Three first-floor windows to the right of the porch are all 20th-century casements with glazing bars; the centre one is flanked by labels carved with four-leaf motifs. The 1585 date plaque sits high at the right end. The inner room has a late 16th-century four-light granite-mullioned window with king mullion. The hall has a larger three-light version with hoodmould, and the labels are inscribed with initials IB (the same appear over the two-light porch window but in reverse). Some late 16th-century mullions have been replaced; all now contain 20th-century diamond panes of leaded glass.

The gabled porch has a round-headed outer arch with chamfered surround. The left side contains a projecting garderobe shaft. The right side has a blocked ground-floor window and a tiny slit to the first floor. The passage doorway contains a 20th-century door. Both porch and right end gable have shaped kneelers and coping. The rear contains 20th-century casements with glazing bars, and behind the hall is a 20th-century rebuilt granite-mullioned window. The kitchen window has a granite hoodmould with labels carved IB. The passage rear doorway holds a 20th-century door.

Internally, deep slots for a draw-bar survive inside the back door. A small oak Tudor arch opens from the passage to the service-end dairy. The hall features a large granite ashlar fireplace and a four-panel intersecting beam ceiling of moulded beams. The parlour has a granite ashlar fireplace with a smaller version in the chamber above, and a soffit-chamfered crossbeam with step stops.

Each of the main block's room sections—passage and dairy, hall, and parlour—has a different roof. The two-bay section over passage and dairy is the earliest, carried on a face-pegged jointed cruck with cambered collar and small triangular yoke (Alcock's apex type L1), probably early 16th-century. It now opens to the apex over the stair, though smoke-blackening from the original open hearth fire remains visible. A clean mid- or late 16th-century side-pegged jointed cruck over the passage-hall partition was filled with oak close-studding in the late 16th or early 17th century. The unusually wide roof bay over the hall was propped by an intermediate truss in the late 19th or early 20th century. The two-bay roof over the parlour is carried on a clean face-pegged jointed cruck truss, unusual for the late 16th century. The kitchen has a large unstopped soffit-chamfered and step-stopped oak lintel with an oven and a three-bay roof of uncollared true cruck trusses. Dating here is difficult: the roof trusses and crossbeam are of indeterminate date, though the fireplace is late 16th or 17th century. A first-floor doorway from the former parlour stairs, with an oak round-headed arch, could be early 16th-century. The upper room is said to have a small window connecting through to the principal bedchamber and contains a cupboard in the wall that could be interpreted as an aumbry. This arrangement suggests the upper room may have been a domestic chapel or oratory, which would place it in the pre-Reformation period.

Despite dating and interpretation difficulties, West Week is an important and attractive Dartmoor farmhouse. The building, along with its granite walls and gateway, granite crosses, and farm buildings, forms an exceptional group in a particularly fine Dartmoor setting with open moorland behind. It is mentioned in Domesday as part of the manor of Whicha or Week. In 1550 it was sold by the Wykes family to the Battishill family.