Crossways

Crossways is a house dating from the early 16th century, with significant improvements made in the late 16th and 17th centuries. It was partly rebuilt in the 19th century and underwent modernization in 1985. The building features plastered walls, likely made from granite stone rubble, possibly with cob, and has stone rubble stacks along with plastered brick stacks. The roof is covered with asbestos slate, which replaced the original thatch.

The house is designed with a three-room-and-through-passage layout, positioned along the streetfront and sloping down the hillside, facing northeast. The unheated inner room is located at the right end, while the hall contains a large axial stack that backs onto the passage. The service end room has an end stack that backs onto the adjoining property. Although an internal inspection was not possible during the survey, previous descriptions indicate that the original structure was a late medieval open hall house, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire.

In the mid-16th century, an inner room chamber was added, projecting into the upper end of the hall. The hall fireplace was likely inserted in the late 16th century, and the hall was floored over in the 19th and 20th centuries, featuring casements with glazing bars. The front doorway of the passage is roughly central and now has a 20th-century door beneath a contemporary flat-roofed hood. The roof is gable-ended.

While the interior was not available for inspection, previous descriptions note a hall roof supported by massive jointed crucks with cambered collars, which are smoke-blackened from the open hearth fire. There is also an oak plank-and-muntin screen at the upper end of the hall, with curving ends of the inner room joists creating an internal jetty, as well as a granite ashlar hall fireplace and a 17th-century hall crossbeam. South Zeal is notable for being one of the few medieval boroughs in Devon, where a significant number of 16th and 17th-century houses still exist.