Waye Farmhouse

Waye Farmhouse is a house formerly operating as a farmhouse, located in Lustleigh. It dates from the late medieval period with later additions to the rear. The structure is built of stone rubble covered with roughcast, with what may be a layer of cob beneath the eaves. The roof is thatched with a half-hip at the right-hand end.

The building has two granite ashlar chimneystacks. One projects slightly from the left-hand gable, while the other stands on the ridge, offset to the right and serving the former hall. Both have tapered tops with what appears to be an added course of stones on top.

The house follows a three-room and through-passage plan. There is a narrow, unheated inner room, with the hall and lower room probably equipped with chimneys by the 17th century. The hall fireplace backs onto the passage and has an early newel stair beside it, partly set into the wall thickness and partly projecting into the room. On the other side of the fireplace, against the front wall, stands a winding stair of uncertain date. The lower end of the house appears to have been altered in the early 18th century by inserting a straight flight of stairs at the rear of the room and building a lean-to extension behind it. There is a 20th-century lean-to at the rear of the passage that rises two storeys, with the upper storey partly built into the roof-space, and a single-storey 20th-century porch at the rear.

The front wall has four ground-storey openings. The doorway in the second opening from the left contains an early 18th-century door in a bead-moulded wood frame with two railed-and-fielded ovolo-moulded panels at the top and a flush panel (possibly a later alteration) at the bottom. A late 19th-century cast-iron knocker hangs from this door. A 20th-century thatched wood porch stands to the right. To the left of the door is a 19th-century wood casement window of four lights with two panes per light. To the right is a 20th-century window with leaded panes, probably set into part of an earlier opening. At the right-hand end is a two-light wooden window that appears to have been a horizontally sliding sash. The upper storey has only two windows, positioned to the left of the porch and rising into the thatch. Both have 18th or early 19th-century wood casements with leaded panes—the left window has four lights and the right window has two lights. The left-hand gable wall has no windows. The right-hand gable wall has a 20th-century wood casement with leaded panes in the ground storey and a three-light 18th or early 19th-century wood casement with leaded panes in the upper storey. The rear wall has three similar windows at the upper end. The back door, within the porch, is early 18th-century with raised-and-fielded ovolo-moulded panels and wrought-iron strap-hinges.

The interior provides a remarkably complete picture of a medieval house remodelled in the late 16th or 17th century and considerably refitted in the early 18th century. Many original plaster wall-surfaces remain intact. The former hall has a stud-and-panel screen at the upper end. The head-beam has quarter-round and hollow mouldings, but the studs have been renewed in the early 18th century and are bead-moulded without stops. A cranked door-head and old plank door with wrought-iron strap-hinges exist at the right-hand end. Above the screen, mingling with the joists of an inserted late 16th or 17th-century upper floor, are the joist-ends of an internal jetty, formerly projecting into the medieval open hall. The joist-ends are chamfered with step-stops and have rounded ends; the position of the stops indicates the screen has been moved back slightly from its original position. The studs are plain towards the inner room. The inserted upper floor beam in the hall is chamfered with step-stops, with plain joists. The hall fireplace is large, with monolithic granite jambs chamfered without stops and a wood lintel with a slightly hollow chamfer where the stops are simply vertical cuts. An oven is positioned at the back of the fireplace on the right-hand side. The stair to the right has an early 18th-century door with two raised-and-fielded ovolo-moulded panels and L-shaped strap-hinges, with the earlier door-frame cut back to accommodate it. The stair has possibly two solid wood steps and a blocked slit window. In the front wall is a small 18th-century cupboard with an ogee-headed panel, raised-and-fielded and ovolo-moulded.

In the through-passage, the back of the hall fireplace consists of large ashlar blocks lightly plastered. Early 18th-century doors lead to the hall, lower room, and the added room to the rear of the latter. The first two doors have raised-and-fielded ovolo-moulded panels—the door to the hall has long wrought-iron strap-hinges with two panels, while the door to the lower room has three panels. The third door consists of three vertical planks with the middle plank recessed. The lower room has a fireplace with a plain wood lintel and early 18th-century cupboards flanking it on either side, with raised-and-fielded ovolo-moulded panelled doors. The front window has a panelled window-seat. The room above, in the second storey, has similar cupboards flanking a gable fireplace with an early 18th-century moulded wood cornice. Several early 18th-century panelled doors exist in upstairs rooms.

The roof over the hall is medieval. The timbers, thatching spars, and underside of the thatch are smoke-blackened. There is no open truss, but the closed truss over the jetty in the ground storey has threaded purlins and an angled ridge-piece, with whitened plaster infill. The roof beyond (over the inner room) is not accessible. At the lower end, past the hall chimney, much of the roof has been rebuilt, but a blackened open truss survives along with some blackened common rafters and thatching spars. This truss differs in not having had a ridge-piece. Part of another truss remains, cut away to insert the hall stack. The feet of the trusses are not exposed.

Associated outbuildings include two large barns in front of the house and an ash-house in the garden to the north-west, which are separately listed.