Ensworthy

Ensworthy, also known as Great Ensworthy, is a former Dartmoor longhouse built in the late 15th to early 16th century, with major improvements in the late 16th and 17th centuries. It was modernised around 1960 with a small extension added at that time. The building is constructed of large coursed blocks of granite ashlar, with rear outshots and a 20th-century extension of granite stone-rubble. It has granite stacks, one retaining its original granite ashlar chimneyshaft and the other replaced with brick. The roof is thatched, with corrugated iron covering the extension.

The house follows a three-room-and-through-passage plan facing south-east, built down the hill slope. The inner room at the uphill south-western end was originally very small and unheated, likely used as a dairy, and has since been knocked through to enlarge the hall. The hall features a large axial stack backing onto the passage. The service end room has a gable-end stack with a winder stair rising alongside. The present layout reflects mid-17th-century arrangements.

Originally the house was a Dartmoor longhouse open to the roof from end to end, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. A hall fireplace was inserted in the mid to late 16th century. The house was progressively floored over between the mid 16th and mid 17th centuries. The shippon was converted to a parlour in the mid 17th century, with a new stack blocking the original cow door in the right end wall. At the same time the hall was converted to a kitchen.

The building is now two storeys throughout with secondary outshots across the back and a circa 1960 extension on the lower end. The exterior features a regular but asymmetrical four-window front with 20th-century replacement casements with glazing bars. First-floor windows were enlarged around 1960 to rise into the thatch with pointed thatch arches over them. The front passage doorway, positioned right of centre, is probably late 16th to early 17th century, with a Tudor arch and chamfered surround containing an ancient studded oak plank door. The front was faced with granite ashlar, leaving no evidence of late medieval fenestration. The roof is half-hipped at the upper left end and gable-ended to the right. The downhill right end wall contains a two-centred arch doorway—the original cow door—which was blocked in the mid 17th century by the parlour stack and is now partly covered by an external stone staircase serving the extension.

The interior retains good features despite the removal of the upper hall crosswall. The hall has a large granite ashlar fireplace with hollow-chamfered surround and a plainly soffit-chamfered crossbeam. The rear passage doorway was reduced in size in the mid 17th century when a granite doorframe with ovolo-moulded surround was installed, though one jamb is now missing. The mid-17th-century parlour in the service end, converted from the shippon, features plain soffit-chamfered crossbeams and a granite fireplace with a soffit-chamfered and scroll-stopped oak crossbeam.

Only one true cruck truss is visible on the first floor, but the roofspace reveals that others are boxed into the partitions. All trusses have cambered collars and small yokes at the apexes (Alcock's apex type L1). The truss nearest the lower end appears to be an A-frame with a smaller collar but the same apex form. The entire roof, including common rafters and the underside of the thatch, is thoroughly smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. Ensworthy represents both an exceptionally attractive and highly interesting Dartmoor farmhouse.