Meavy Barton

Meavy Barton is a farmhouse of considerable architectural interest, originally a small manor house or barton farm to the manor. The building dates from the early 16th century but was greatly remodelled and extended in the mid-17th century. It is constructed of stone rubble walls, rendered at the front, with a gable-ended slate roof. Three tall granite ashlar chimney stacks with dripcourses and moulded rims are positioned at each gable end (the right-hand one originally axial) and one axial stack centrally.

The earliest surviving feature is the remains of an arch-braced roof truss over the central hall stack, indicating an early 16th-century date. The truss is not smoke-blackened despite the insertion of the stack beneath it, suggesting it originally served either an open hall with a stack elsewhere or an important first-floor chamber. The extent of this original house is unclear because of the extensive mid-seventeenth-century remodelling and extension that created an unconventional plan.

The lower end to the right, below the passage, has been demolished, and its original extent is unknown, though it may have formed a cross wing. The remodelled house is double-depth. To the left of the passage is a small room, probably a parlour, heated by a stack backing onto the passage. Behind this is a lobby leading from the passage to the hall, with a large open well staircase at the rear of the lobby. The large hall is heated by a very wide axial fireplace at its inner end—the stack inserted beneath the early sixteenth-century truss. Doorways adjoining the hall fireplace and leading to two small unheated service rooms suggest the hall stack is contemporary with the mid-seventeenth-century remodelling. To the left of the hall is a room heated by a gable end stack projecting at the front, possibly a great parlour, with a service room at the rear. A straight joint visible externally suggests this parlour may have formed part of the original house. Moulded doorways at the passage, both to the lower end and at its rear, may indicate the lower end extended rearward. Apart from the demolition of the lower end—timing uncertain—and a nineteenth-century outshut built against the left-hand end, the house has been little altered since the seventeenth century.

The exterior is two storeys with attic to a projecting gabled wing at the left-hand end. The asymmetrical three-window front features a lean-to porch at the front of the right-hand end and a wide projecting gable wing at the left. All windows are original two-light chamfered granite mullions, now with twentieth-century casements inserted into the lights. The second-floor window of the projecting gable is a single chamfered granite-framed light. First-floor windows are in gabled dormers on the main range.

The lean-to porch was originally two storeys, as evidenced by a moulded string course above the doorway. The outer doorway has a roundheaded granite arch with roll moulding and hollow chamfer; the spandrels bear a carved star motif, and each jamb has a moulded plinth. The inner doorway shares a similar roundheaded granite arch with simpler roll moulding, stopped inside and outside by a carved heart. The arched oak door, probably contemporary, has a moulded frame and stiles. The passage is now single storey; at its right-hand end is a roundheaded granite doorway originally leading to the lower end, with a stone mounting block against the wall to its left.

The three-window rear elevation also features two-light granite mullions; the left-hand ground-floor one is blocked. To the right is a tall gable with a pointed arched chamfered granite doorway on the ground floor, beyond which are two mullioned windows with one and two lights respectively. The first floor of this section has a two-light mullioned window with a single granite-framed light on the second floor. At the left gable end a clear straight joint marks the junction between builds, with two two-light granite-mullioned windows on the first floor below which stands a nineteenth-century outshut.

The interior preserves the seventeenth-century plan and numerous features of that period. The only recognisable element of the sixteenth-century house is one roof truss virtually above the hall stack. Its morticed collar has been removed, but the lowest section of moulded arch-bracing survives. At the apex a form of saddle is set into the principals; the ridge does not survive. The truss is clean and unblackened. The other roof trusses are seventeenth-century with straight principals, threaded purlins, and collars lapped and pegged onto the trusses.

The hall features a wide granite-framed fireplace with continuous roll moulding and a carved star in each spandrel. Two four-centred granite-arched studded plank doors are on the rear wall. The left-hand room at the hall's rear contains a large granite salting tub. The small room to the left of the passage has a four-centred granite-arched doorway and a chamfered granite-framed fireplace, now blocked. Behind this room is a large, good-quality mid-seventeenth-century open well staircase with closed string, square newels with ball finials, turned balusters, and a heavy moulded handrail. Three further four-centred granite-arched roll-moulded doorways exist—one to the right-hand side of the hall, one at the passage rear, and one at its left-hand side. The two first-floor rooms at the left-hand have seventeenth-century granite-framed fireplaces with straight lintels.

The former importance of this house is demonstrated by the quality of its features and its unusual plan. It has undergone little alteration internally or externally since the seventeenth century and forms part of a traditional farm complex.