49, New Street

SX 7087 6/155

CHAGFORD NEW STREET, Chagford No 49

GV II

House. C16 with major late C16 and C17 improvements. Plastered granite; granite stack with granite ashlar chimney shaft topped with C20 brick; slate roof (formerly thatch). Plan and development: 2-room plan house built along New Street and with a carriageway through the right (north) end. Axial stack between the 2 rooms serving the larger right room and with a newel stair rising alongside. Although only limited internal inspection was possible at the time of this survey it seems likely that this house, like some of its neighbours, was originally built as a 3-room-and-through- passage plan house. The inner room has been knocked through to create the present carriageway and the present small left room occupies the site of the original passage. If so, the service end room has been divided off in the late C18 - early C19 and was developed as Nos 53 and 55 New Street (q.v.). The original house is probably C16. Without inspecting the roof it is not possible to ascertain how much of the original house was open to the roof and whether, as is suspected, it was heated by and open hearth fire. Nevertheless it evidently was some form of hall house. Now 2 storeys throughout. Exterior: irregular 3-window front of late C19 windows, horned 4-pane sashes to the ground floor and casements with glazing bars to the first floor and there is a tiny stair window half way up left of centre. The carriageway has C20 double doors. The roof runs parallel with the street abutting the adjoining properties. Good interior but only limited access was available at the time of the survey. The hall has a granite ashlar fireplace with a oak lintel, the soffit of which is cambered and soffit-cambered. Alongside there is a C16 oak shoulder-headed doorway to the left room (the former passage). Door to left of fireplace to newel stair. At the upper end of the hall there is a rubble partition up to first floor level. The inner room (now the carriageway) is floored over by axial joists which are cantilevered over the crosswall, their rounded ends projecting into the hall and carrying the bressumer of a jettied inner room chamber framed crosswall. The hall was floored over later (probably in the C17) by a soffit-chamfered axial beams. The joists are soffit-chamfered with straight cut stops. The rest of the house was not available for inspection but if its neighbours to the north are anything to go by then it probably has a true cruck truss roof smoke-blackened from end to end.

Listing NGR: SX7011387263