Lower Priestacott Farmhouse

Lower Priestacott Farmhouse is a farmhouse and former Dartmoor longhouse, built in the early 16th century with major alterations in the late 16th and 17th centuries, including a late 17th-century parlour wing extension, and modernised in the mid-19th century. The building is constructed of plastered granite stone rubble with some cob on the wall tops. It has granite stacks with granite ashlar chimney shafts, one of which was extended with 20th-century brick. The roof is thatch, though corrugated iron has been added over the shippon.

The building is L-shaped, with the original part forming the main block. The original structure is a low 3-room-and-through-passage Dartmoor longhouse facing south-east and built down the hillslope. At the uphill south-west end, an unheated inner room is terraced into the hillslope; it is now a kitchen but was probably formerly a dairy. The hall has an axial stack backing onto the passage. The end of the shippon was demolished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when a barn was added to the end. In the late 17th century, a parlour wing was built at right angles in front, overlapping the end of the inner room. At that time, the hall became a kitchen and a corridor was built through the inner room from the hall to the new parlour. There is a stair from the upper end of the hall and a 19th-century stair inserted into the parlour.

The original house was open to the roof from end to end, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. Through the 16th and 17th centuries, the hall stack was inserted and the house was progressively floored over. The building now has 2 storeys throughout.

On the exterior, the main front has a single ground floor 19th-century casement window serving the hall. To the right, beyond the oven projection, is the passage front doorway containing a 19th-century plank door in a solid timber frame. The rear passage doorway is smaller. To the right of this is the cow-door with a hayloft loading hatch directly above it, and to the right of this door is a ventilator slit. There is another ventilator slit opposite in the back wall. The inner side of the parlour wing has a 2-window front of 19th-century casements with glazing bars and includes a secondary 19th-century door. Both blocks are gable-ended.

The interior preserves elements from all the major building phases. The hall fireplace is partly blocked, but its massive size and plain granite ashlar surround are evident; it was probably inserted in the late 16th century. At the upper end of the hall, the headbeam shows an oak plank-and-muntin screen, which may be an original low partition. The inner room was floored over in the late 16th century, and the chamber oversailed the screen to produce an internal jetty. The framed crosswall of the chamber is clean on the hall side, suggesting it was probably built at the same time as the hall fireplace was inserted. The hall was floored over sometime in the 17th century with a soffit-chamfered axial beam. The roof over the hall and inner room is original. True cruck trusses are suspected, but the lower sections of both trusses are boxed in. There is a hip cruck at the inner room end. This entire section, including the underside of the thatch, is thoroughly smoke-blackened from the open hearth fire.

Over the passage there is an oak truss, with the lower parts again hidden. This appears to be late 16th century and was built with the hall stack; it carries another roof over the top of the original. The shippon crossbeam has been removed. The parlour wing was modernised in the 19th century; surviving carpentry detail includes a plain solid doorframe from the inner room corridor. The fireplace here is blocked.