Moonshayes Farmhouse

Details

UPOTTERY ST 20 NW 7/109 Moonshayes Farmhouse - GV II Farmhouse. Early or mid C16 with major later C16 and C17 improvements including a mid C17 kitchen block, refurbished in the late C19 with some contemporary service extensions. Plastered local stone and flint rubble, maybe with some cob; stone rubble stacks, 1 with a stone rubble chimneyshaft, the other one topped with C19 brick; slate roof, formerly thatch. Plan and development: L-plan farmhouse. The main block faces east onto the farm courtyard and has a 4-room plan. At the right (north) end there is a storeroom/workshop. Next to it is a small lobby which is connected to the storeroom/workshop but not the main house. The other side of the partition is the main stair built in the C19. This lobby and staircase occupy the unheated inner room of the C16 house. Next to it is the hall with an axial stack backing onto 2 small unheated service rooms. At the left (south) end a 3-room plan wing projects forward at right angles. It overlaps the end connecting only on the corner. The first room of the crosswing is a former kitchen with an axial stack backing onto a small unheated room, a former dairy, and, at the end is a granary. This is a house with a long and complex structural history. The main block contains the historic core of the house. This undoubtedly began as some form of open hall house but the roofspace is inaccessible and therefore it is not possible at present to determine whether it was then heated by an open hearth fire. (However the farmer reported finding burnt or sooted stone in the southern end wall when he enlarged a window there). The main block has a somewhat altered 3 or 4-room-and-through passage plan. The passage front doorway remains but the rear doorway is now blocked and the passage has been enlarged to a small room at the expense of the service (south) end room. The hall fireplace was added in the mid or late C16 and there is evidence for a stair rising alongside. Thus it seems that passage and service end were floored over at the same time. The hall itself was floored over in the early Cl7. The inner room was much altered in the late C19 when half of it was taken up by a new staircase and the other half sealed off as a lobby attached to the new workshop/storeroom built onto the end. The kitchen wing was built in the mid C17 and the dairy and granary were added to it in the late C19. The farmhouse is 2 storeys. Exterior: the main block has irregular front with 2 ground floor windows and 5 first floor windows, all are C20 casements without glazing bars except the unglazed window to the workshop/storeroom which is C19. The former passage front doorway is towards the left end and it contains a C19 part-glazed plank door behind a C20 gabled porch. The workshop/storeroom doorway and window both have low brick segmental arches over. An early C17 oak Tudor arch doorframe has been reset in the doorway here. There are similar C20 windows to the rear and in the kitchen crosswing. The granary has an external flignt of wooden stairs. Both wings are gable-ended. Interior: in the main block the 2 service rooms in the space of the original passage and service room are the result of the late C19 modernisation. Only the headbeam of an oak plank-and-muntin partition which once screened the lower (service side) of the through-passage shows earlier than the C19. In the former hall the fireplace is now blocked and an alcove alongside occupies the site of the late C16 staircase (a chamfered oak doorjamb with pyramid stops which shows on the first floor represents a late C16 doorway from the stairhead). The hall crossbeams are chamfered and 1 has step stops. The former inner room was also arranged in the C19 although a chamfered crossbeam remains over the partition between the C19 stair and lobby beyond. The main block roof is inaccessibly although the plastered or papered over bases of the trusses show; their shape suggests jointed crucks. The workshop/storeroom has exclusively C19 carpentry. The kitchen has plain chamfered crossbeams and although the fireplace is blocked its large size is evident and its cambered oak lintel (chamfered with scroll stops) is exposed. The roof over this section was replaced in the C19. Moonhayes is an interesting multi-phase Devon farmhouse.

Listing NGR: ST2023609873

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

86664

Legacy System:

LBS

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