Lower Jurston Farmhouse Including Garden Walls To South

Lower Jurston Farmhouse is a former Dartmoor longhouse, probably dating from the late 15th to early 16th century with major improvements made in the 16th and 17th centuries. The last significant modernisation took place in the late 19th century. The farmhouse is accompanied by garden walls to the south, probably late 19th century in date.

The main block is constructed of granite ashlar walls in massive coursed blocks, with some granite stone rubble patching and cob on the wall tops. The front is whitewashed, whilst the rear is exposed stone. Two granite stacks retain their original granite ashlar chimney shafts. The roof is thatched. A kitchen block of granite stone rubble and cob adjoins the rear, topped with a 19th-century brick stack and covered with slate.

The house is built down a gentle slope facing south-south-east. It follows a four-room-and-through-passage plan with the inner room terraced into the hillside at the western end. An unheated dairy sits between the inner room and hall, whilst the long storeroom below the passage was originally built as a shippon at the downhill eastern end. Although most of the structure dates from the 15th to 17th century, much of it is now hidden beneath 19th-century plaster, making precise development difficult to establish.

The house began as a Devon longhouse with an open hall heated by an open hearth fire. Through the 16th and 17th centuries it was progressively floored to provide first-floor chambers, was enlarged, and fireplaces were inserted. The dairy probably occupies the original inner room, whilst in the late 16th or early 17th century the house was extended at that end to provide a new inner room parlour with an end stack and a newel stair alongside. The hall retains an axial stack backing onto the passage and a newel stair in a turret projecting to the rear. A probable mid-to-late 17th-century kitchen block with an end stack projects at right angles to the rear, blocking the rear end of the passage. The building now stands at two storeys throughout.

The front elevation is irregular with five windows of 20th-century casements without glazing bars. The original front passage doorway lies right of centre and now contains a late 19th-century plank door with a contemporary gabled hood of corrugated iron. To its right, part of a blocked cow door is visible. In the late 19th century, a secondary doorway was inserted to the inner room parlour and fitted with a gabled slate-roofed porch. Here and there ashlar blocks show through plaster and whitewash, hinting at earlier fenestration. At the far left end, part of a small blocked window can be seen. The roof is gable-ended to the left and half-hipped to the right. The right end displays exposed granite ashlar, clearly the end of the original shippon, featuring a central disused drain hole, a small slit window directly above, and a first-floor hayloft loading hatch.

The rear is of exposed stone with few windows. The kitchen block and its woodstore obscure the rear of the hall and passage and contain 20th-century windows. To the left, the shippon displays intact ashlar walls containing three small 19th-century windows with internal shutters, possibly enlarging original slit windows. To the right of the kitchen block, ashlar gives way behind the inner room parlour, which includes a 19th-century half dormer containing a 12-pane sash. Two doorways are inserted into this section—one with a 19th-century door, the other blocked. A small window to the chamber above the dairy is boarded over but appears to include an old oak frame. The parlour end wall is also ashlar and shows a blocked stair window.

The roof structure provides the principal evidence for the house's late medieval origins. In the shippon end, which is currently accessible, there is a hip cruck and two probably raised true cruck trusses. Both have cranked collars but different apex forms: the lower one has a mortice-and-tenon joint (Alcock's type E), whilst the upper one is yoked and carries a diagonal ridge (Alcock's type L1), likely dating from the first half of the 16th century. The rafters are slightly blackened but not sufficiently to prove smoke-blackening. The truss over the hall and a now-closed truss at the upper end are also true crucks with cambered collars, suspected to be original, though their apex types and evidence of smoke-blackening are hidden in the roofspace. The closed truss over the upper end of the dairy and the truss over the parlour have straight principals from presumably 17th-century A-frame trusses, reinforcing the idea that this end is an extension.

In the shippon end, the former hayloft is carried on three crossbeams, all soffit-chamfered but finished differently: the one nearest the passage has step stops, the middle one has no stops, and the end one has straight cut stops. There is no sign of an early passage-shippon partition. Between half and two-thirds of the shippon length stands a flimsy 18th or 19th-century planked screen, with the remainder open.

In the hall, the fireplace features a granite lintel and hollow-chamfered surround, probably inserted in the late 16th or early 17th century. At the upper end, evidence of an internal jetty indicates that the hall was the last room to be floored. The main beam is boxed in, but a half beam against the chimney block is early 17th century, ovolo-moulded with scroll stops. No early carpentry detail is exposed in the dairy or parlour, and the fireplaces in the parlour and chamber above are blocked. The kitchen contains a plain chamfered axial beam, though the fireplace lintel is obscured. The kitchen roof was not inspected.

The narrow strip of garden along the front of the house is enclosed by low rubble walls, probably late 19th century in date.

This is an extremely important house. It represents a late medieval Dartmoor longhouse with a classic plan development: a kitchen block added to the rear and a parlour separated from the hall by a dairy. Jurston was a medieval estate, first mentioned in 1242 and known as Jordaneston or Jesson in the 13th century. During the medieval period it was occupied by the Prouz family.