Yarner House

Yarner House is a large house, originally dating to the 17th century or earlier, and significantly remodelled and extended in the 19th century. It occupies a prominent location approximately 800 feet above sea level. The house is constructed of solid rendered walls with mostly concealed slate roofs, topped by high crenellated parapets. The rendered chimneystacks feature 19th-century detailing, mainly crenellated, but with some tapered tops in the southwest corner.

The house is L-shaped; the original core, characterized by very thick walls, is contained within a square block at the southeast end. The frontages are three storeys high. The original section has a three-window front to the southeast and a four-window front of similar quality to the northeast. Ground and second-floor windows are embellished with decorative stucco friezes and cornices resting on consoles. The ground-floor windows have mullioned-and-transomed wooden casements with two panes per light, while the second and third-floor windows have plain, small-paned wooden casements. The northeast front's left-hand windows on the second and third storeys are distinctive, incorporating small panes with a quarter-pane margin. A single-story entrance porch with a flat, parapeted roof is centrally positioned on the southeast front, featuring a chamfered, round-headed granite doorway, likely dating to the 17th century. A projecting chimneystack with offsets is located between the two left-hand windows on the northeast front.

A 19th-century addition, which more than doubles the overall size of the house, adjoins the original structure on the northwest side. This addition replicates the crenellated parapet and chimney tops of the older section but features larger windows with fewer glazing bars, and incorporates a separate entrance porch on the southeast end.

Inside, the two northeast rooms on both the ground and second floors retain chamfered beams with run-out stops to the beam ends, indicating the original house was three-storied. This construction style, combined with its scale, suggests a status above that of a farmhouse. It is, however, impossible to be certain due to a 19th-century roof rebuild. Other early features are likely concealed behind plaster. The 19th-century interior includes a large, plain wooden staircase and two papier-mâché ceilings in a neo-Elizabethan style.

The house's history is poorly documented. A record referencing the will of Moses Stoneham (d. 1678) suggests he built a new house; Stoneham, born around 1638, migrated to Devon between 1650 and 1678. The earliest recorded deed, from 1706, documents the sale of the Yarner estate for £1196, and by 1829 the estate comprised 500 acres. In the late 19th century, the house passed to (Sir) Harry Eve, a Member of Parliament for Ashburton and later a senior judge. A 1918 sale catalogue references new outbuildings constructed in 1896 and 1908, but makes no mention of alterations to the house itself.