Great Houndtor Farmhouse

Great Houndtor Farmhouse

Farmhouse, probably built in the early 17th century to replace an earlier house that stood in the farmyard. The building underwent considerable modernisation in the mid-18th century, which changed how rooms were used but left the basic plan largely intact. Additional outshuts were added to the rear during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

The walls are constructed from granite rubble with larger granite quoins at the corners. Three granite rubble chimneys project from the building—two as gables and one axial—all featuring drip-courses and shallow granite capping stones. The roof is thatched and gabled at both ends.

The house follows a three-room and through-passage plan. Originally, the hall had its fireplace backing onto the passage, with an inner heated room and a lower room. During the 18th-century modernisation, the lower room was converted into a parlour and a dairy was probably added as an outshut behind the hall. A second dairy outshut was added in the early 19th century. This period of modernisation included high-quality woodwork throughout the house, including doors, shutters, window seats, cupboards, and a fireplace. The middle staircase may date from this period, though it could be slightly earlier.

The south-east front is asymmetrical with five windows. These are early 20th-century casements of two and three lights, set in small openings with timber lintels. A 19th-century granite rubble gabled porch with stone seats on either side frames the through-passage doorway to the right of centre, with a very wide 19th-century panelled door leading into the passage. To the left of centre is a doorway into the former inner room, with a 19th or early 20th-century plank stable door and wooden lintel.

Attached to the south-west corner is a very small single-storey open-fronted granite rubble building, possibly once a pump-house, containing a stone trough that discharges into a drain running from the house. Two stone outshuts to the rear flank the cross passage. A small window set directly under the eaves lights the garret staircase, and in the adjoining gable end another window lights the end garret bedroom.

Interior

The former inner room is among the few spaces substantially unaltered by 18th-century modernisation. It retains a heavily beamed ceiling with two cross beams that are chamfered but unstopped, and a large open fireplace with a chamfered wooden lintel bearing worn scroll stops. The left jamb is monolithic granite, while the right consists of several stones. A wooden newel staircase projects to the left of the fireplace and is probably not original, having been inserted when the room was likely relegated to kitchen status in the 18th century. The fielded panel shutters and window seat below feature similar panelling.

The very large hall stack clearly conceals an early open fireplace. At the partition to the inner room, a two-fielded panel door with H-L hinges leads to a framed staircase continuing to the garret. Another framed straight run staircase rises from the hall at the through-passage side of the rear wall.

The through passage has a distinctive cobbled floor decorated with a design of three consecutive squares, the middle one containing a flower motif.

The lower room features a small open fireplace with a square-cut wooden lintel. The 18th-century alterations here include a cupboard next to the fireplace with a moulded architrave and dentilled cornice, featuring a curved back with shelves following the same line, doors underneath, and originally doors in the top section as well. The shutters and window seat resemble those in the hall except the shutters are not fielded and there is a six-fielded panel door.

At the top of the straight run staircase are bannisters on the landing with very closely spaced elaborately turned balustrades, a newel of the same design topped with a small finial, and a flat handrail. The central bedroom above the hall contains an 18th-century fireplace with reeded pilasters and dentilled cornice, and a fielded panel window seat. Several other bedrooms have two-fielded panel doors and high-quality contemporary cupboards with H or H-L hinges.

The roof is of a standard 18th-century type with straight principals and lapped and pegged collars.

This farmhouse preserves an unspoilt traditional facade with the original ground floor plan relatively unchanged. The 18th-century modernisation represents a fairly typical change of room use, and considerable high-quality joinery from this period survives intact.