Yeo Farmhouse

Yeo Farmhouse is a farmhouse, possibly a former Dartmoor longhouse, with probable 16th or 17th century origins. The original house appears to have been rebuilt on the old plan in 1842, according to a date plaque, with family tradition recording that it was rebuilt after a fire. At that time, outshots were constructed along the rear.

The building is constructed of plastered granite with granite stacks featuring plastered brick and granite ashlar chimney shafts, and a slate roof. It is a two-storey structure built on a slight slope and facing east-south-east, arranged on an 11-room-and-through-passage plan. The inner room is at the left (southern) end and contains an end stack with a winder stair alongside. The hall has an axial stack backing onto the wide passage, with the present main stair to the rear. The service end, or former shippon, contains a kitchen with a rear lateral stack and a store at the right (northern) end, which family tradition records was a shippon before 1842. Outshots extend across the entire rear of the house.

Behind the inner room is the dairy; the former cider store behind the hall is now converted to a bathroom; a pump house sits to the rear of the passage; and behind the service end a coach house (now garage) with pigsties behind. The exterior displays a regular four-window front of mostly 19th century casements with glazing bars, with a fifth window on the right end that would make it symmetrical. The front passage doorway, roughly central, now contains a 20th century door with a gabled slate-roofed hood. Directly above it is the datestone commemorating the 1842 rebuild. A doorway to the inner room at the left end now contains a 20th century French window, and there is a plank door at the right end to the store. The roof is gable-ended and carried down to the rear over the outshots. The coach house outshot includes a row of three pigsties facing backwards, each with a low doorway and feeding hatch alongside containing a granite trough.

The interior has been little altered since the 19th century, with no earlier features visible. The fireplaces contain 19th century grates except for the large but plain granite kitchen fireplace. No structural carpentry is exposed and all joinery is 19th century. The roof is reported to have a 20th century replacement structure.

The dairy outshot is terraced into the slope and features around its outer two sides a granite ledge with a shallow channel in its top. Water could be fed by an iron pipe from the nearby stream into the channel to cool the cream pans. There is a drain and granite trough at the end, and the original, though now uneven, brick floor remains. In the pump house, spring water is still drawn from a 19th century pump, and there are two large granite troughs. Although the house was connected to mains electricity in 1986, the nearby mill had provided hydro-electricity since 1893. By the front door is still a wheel for starting the dynamo, connected to the mill by an underground chain, and the original voltmeter remains in the wall.

Although Yeo Farmhouse is essentially 19th century in character, it is a remarkably complete farmhouse retaining nearly all its 19th century fittings. The Perryman family has lived on the site since circa 1450. The farmhouse is part of an important group of preserved listed buildings associated with it, including the office and garden railings, mill, smithy, and the Old School House.