Higher Chieflowman Farmhouse Including Front Garden Walls

Details

UPLOWMAN ST 01 NW 4/163 Higher Chieflowman Farmhouse - 5.4.66 including front garden walls GV II* Farmhouse. Early C16 with major later C16 and C17 improvements, and a thorough late C17 modernisation. Plastered stone rubble, probably with cob; stone rubble stacks topped with C19 and C20 brick; thatch roof, one end replaced with concrete tile, and slate to rear outshot. Plan and development: originally a 3-room-and-through-passage plan house facing south-east and it is built across a gentle hillslope. At the left (south-western) end is an inner room parlour with a gable-end stack. The hall has a rear lateral stack. The rear of the pasage is now occupied by the main stair. At the right end a service end kitchen has a large gable-end stack with a projecting oven housing. The early C16 smoke-blackened roof survives over the hall and inner room showing that the original house was open to the roof from end to end, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. Apart from this roof there is no apparent evidence of any improvements to the house before the mid C17 but presumably a hall fireplace had been inserted earlier and the inner room at least must have been floored over. Some evidence of such changes may be hidden. In the mid C17 the service end was rebuilt as a kitchen. However the house is essentially the result of a major late 017 refurbishment in which the rear of the passage was blocked by the stairs, hall and parlour fireplaces rebuilt and the rooms refurbished. All the first floor chambers were refurbished and a new higher roof built, some of it over the top of the original roof. A dairy/service wing built at right angles in front and overlapping the right (kitchen) end collapsed in the mid C20. It was either mid or late C17. The service outshot to rear of the kitchen is probably C19. The house is 2 storeys. Exterior: attractive farmhouse with an irregular 4-window front. The right end bay (kitchen and chamber above) has mid C17 oak-framed windows with ovolo-moulded mullions; 4-lights to the ground floor and 3 lights to the first floor. The other windows appear to be late C17. They are oak-framed 3-light windows with flat-faced mullLions. Each light contains a small 8-pane sashes which are presumably C19. These tripartite sashes are very attractive and most unusual. The front doorway is right of centre and contains a mid or late C19 4-panel door behind a contemporary flat-roofed porch with trellis walls. The roof is gable-ended. The rear wall is blind except for a secondary service door to the rear outshot and a small first floor window at the same end. Near the right end of the front wall a cob wall projects a short distance forward at right angles to the main block. It is all that now remains of the C17 service wing and still contains a C17 oak-framed window with chamfered mullion and a contemporary oak doorframe with chamfered surround. Interior: apart from the roof the kitchen contains the earliest features and they are mid C17. There is here a crossbeam with deep soffit-chamfers and although the large fireplace is blocked its soffit-chamfered and scroll-stopped oak lintel show. The rest of the house contains late C17 features and these make up an unusually complete set. Both hall and fireplaces have curving brick pentans (backs) and soffit-chamfered oak lintels. Also both have roughly finished crossbeams. These were probably intended to be clad with plaster and lengths of moulded plaster cornice remain in both rooms (and there is some more in the parlour chamber above. The ground floor doors are C19 but all those on the first floor are late C17; they are 8-panel doors with scratch-moulded rails and muntins and hang on butterfly or H- hinges. The 2 first floor fireplaces (over the parlour and kitchen) both have bolection chimneypieces. The staircase is a plain straight flight. Cupboards in the kitchen and chamber over also late C17 and have panelled oak doors hung on butterfly and H-hinges. The original roof over the inner room and hall is carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses. The whole roof structure here, including the common rafters and underside of the original thatch, is heavily smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The rest of the roof is late C17 and clean. It is carried on A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars. The front garden is terraced a little above the surrounding ground and is enclosed by a C19 low stone rubble wall. This farmhouse has a most picturesque appearance featuring unusual tripartite sash windows. Also the interior is remarkably well-preserved from its late C17 phase. Chieflowman was the Domesday manor of Lonnina. Source: Devon SMR.

Listing NGR: ST0054415641

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

96012

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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