Higher Middlecott Farmhouse

Higher Middlecott Farmhouse is a house, likely dating back to the 16th or 17th century and refurbished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its construction uses plastered walls, probable granite stone rubble, granite stacks topped with late 19th and early 20th century brick, and a thatch roof with slate to an extension.

The house’s plan is L-shaped. The main block faces south-west and is built down a slope, with a three-room-and-through-passage plan. The inner room is terraced into the uphill, north-western end and has a projecting end stack. The hall has an axial stack backing onto the passage and the service end room has a stack at its end. The ground floor has been modernised in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the roof was not inspected, so the house’s development is difficult to ascertain. The plan suggests it was originally an open hall house, and it may have been a former Dartmoor longhouse, although the service end room is not as long as a typical shippon. A 19th-century two-room plan service extension projects at right angles to the rear of the hall. The house is now two storeys throughout.

The front has an irregular four-window arrangement of late 19th and early 20th century casement windows with glazing bars; the window on the left, in the inner room, is gauzed rather than glazed. A late 19th and early 20th century panelled door is located in the front passage doorway, with a matching door to the rear. A small stair window is immediately to the left of the front door. The roof is gable-ended. The inner face of the 19th-century rear block has a two-window front flanked by plank doors. Only the first floor window on the left is original; it is a casement containing rectangular panes of leaded glass. It too is gable-ended, and there is an external flight of stone steps leading to a first-floor doorway at the end.

Internal inspection was limited to external views. The ground floor shows only 19th and 20th century joinery and plasterwork. Fireplaces are blocked by later fireplaces, and the beams are plastered over. The hall retains two crossbeams.

Higher Middlecott has a late medieval plan form, but the extent of original fabric is not known.