Pumpy Cottage

SX 69 SE SOUTH TAWTON EAST WEEK

4/194 Pumpy Cottage

GV II

Cottage in part of a former farmhouse. Late C15-early C16 with major later C16 and C17 improvements, reduced in size to present cottage probably in C19. Granite stone rubble; stone stacks, the hall stack still with its original granite ashlar chimneyshaft; slate roof, formerly thatch. Plan and development: 2-room plan cottage facing south-east built down the hillslope. In fact these 2 rooms are the hall and inner room of a late medieval 3- room-and-through-passage plan house, probably a Dartmoor longhouse. The inner room, at the uphill right end, has a gable-end stack; so too does the hall although this was formerly an axial stack backing onto the passage (part of which remains in a leanto there). The garage and store rooms on the left end occupy the site of the original shippon. The late C15-early C16 farmhouse was open to the roof, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. Probably in the mid C16 the inner room end was floored and this new chamber jettied into the upper end of the hall. The hall stack was inserted in the late C16 - early C17 and the hall floored in the C17. Now 2 storeys with C20 kitchen outshot to rear. Exterior: regular 2-window front of C20 casements with glazing bars and the roof is gable-ended. The front end of the leanto contains the passage front doorway, now with a C20 plank door. Good interior: at the upper end of the hall the stone rubble crosswall may be an original low partition, the oak round-headed doorframe it contains could well be late C15 - early C16. The late C16 - early C17 fireplace is granite ashlar with hollow-chamfered surround and now contains a C19 oven. The C17 axial beam has plain soffit chamfers and the contemporary joists (in the rear bay) are also soffit- chamfered. Inner room has plain joists and the stack here appears to be a C19 insertion. The roof structure is original and contains 2 face-pegged jointed cruck trusses with cambered collars and small triangular yokes (Alock's apex type L1). Both trusses are smoke-blackened from the open hearth fire. The wattle-and-daub crosswall between the hall and inner room chambers is smoke-blackened on the hall side only. East Week is a straggling hamlet which contains several other attractive listed buildings. The roof truss close to the hall chimneybreast includes a series of holes drilled into the undersides of the collar and principals. Does this indicate a smoke bay here before the hall stack was built? Source: N Alcock and M Laithwaite. Medieval Houses in Devon and their modernisation. Ed. Arcn 17 (1973), pp 109-111, figs 43 and 45.

Listing NGR: SX6632791945