Yellands

Yellands is a house dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries, significantly refurbished around 1840 and modernised around 1970. The construction combines materials: granite stone rubble forms the lower walls up to the first floor, with cob above; granite stacks are topped with 19th and 20th-century brick; and a slate roof replaced what was originally thatch.

The house is L-shaped and sits back from the road, built down a hillslope facing north-east. It originally had a 3-room-and-through-passage plan, with an unheated inner room situated uphill on the right, a hall with a large axial stack backing onto the passage, and a service room with a gable-end stack. A 17th-century kitchen wing projects at right angles to the rear of the inner room, also with a gable-end stack. The house likely began as an open hall house, with the hall fireplace inserted in the late 16th century and the hall floored in the 17th century. The service end was refurbished in the 17th century. A rear passage door has been blocked by a 20th-century staircase. In the 20th century, the hall and inner room were combined.

The front of the house presents a regular, though not symmetrical, façade with a four-window arrangement of 16-pane sashes; most are original but some have been replaced with horned versions. A 19th-century four-panel door is located in the passage front doorway, to the left of centre. The roof is gable-ended on the left and hipped on the right.

Internally, the house has undergone extensive modernisation in the 19th and 20th centuries. The only original ceiling beam is a 17th-century crossbeam in the service end, retaining partial chamfers with scroll stops. The hall features a large granite ashlar fireplace with a hollow-chamfered surround, with the right side hooded on a granite corbel and a secondary oven projecting into the room with its housing. The kitchen block has a granite rubble fireplace with a soffit-chamfered oak lintel and a side oven. The ceilings are plain joist. The roof throughout was replaced in the 19th century.

Yellands is historically significant as part of South Zeal, one of the few medieval boroughs in Devon where a noteworthy number of 16th and 17th-century houses remain.