Fordmoor Farmhouse Including Front Garden Walls and Gate Piers

Details

PLYMTREE ST 00 SE 3/123 Fordmoor Farmhouse including front garden walls and gate piers 22.2.55 - II*

Small mansion, former manor house. Late C17 with some C20 modernisations. English bond local handmade red brick on stone rubble footings; brick stacks and chimneyshafts; slate roof, probably thatch originally. Plan: L-plan house. The main block has a 3-room plan. The right (east) room is the parlour and it has a rear lateral stack. The principal chamber above has a projecting end stack on timber and moulded brick corbels. In the centre is a large entrance hall which contains the main stair against the back wall. The left (west) room is the dining room with an end stack. The kitchen occupies the rear block behind the dining room. It has an end stack. The house has undergone only minor modernisations since it was built. However the farmer reports that the earlier farmhouse survived into living memory behind the present house and had been converted to service use. It has been replaced by C20 service outshots across the rear of the main block. The house is 2 storeys with attics and there is a circa 1980 conservatory in front of the left end. Exterior is very good: originally symmetrical 9-window front but now the end windows are blocked and there is the C20 conservatory in front of the left end. All the rest are original oak mullion-and-upper-transom windows containing smaller than usul rectangular panes of leaded glass, including a few probably original green- tinged panes. Also several of the iron casements are original and have ornate wrought iron catches. There are low segmental brick arches over the ground floor windows. There is a flat brick platband at first floor level which steps up over the central doorway. The bead-moulded oak doorframe and mullioned overlight are original but the panelled doors are secondary. The flat-roofed porch with moulded entablature and modillion cornice is also original although its supporting posts have been replaced. Plain eaves cornice and the tall and steeply pitched roof is hipped both ends, so too is the rear block. The stair rises above the rear roof pitch with its own hipped roof. The windows round the rest of the house are mostly original and like those on the front. The rear platbands rise like hoodmoulds over the stair windows giving that seetiona panelled appearance. Interior is good and well-preserved: containing a great deal of original carpentry, joinery and plaster. The main stair is a good dogleg stair rising along the axis of the main block; it has a moulded closed string, square newel posts with ball finials, flat moulded handrail and large turned balusters. The principal parlour is lined with bolection-moulded panelling in 2 heights including a good chimneypiece. There is an identical chimneypiece to the principal chamber above where the ceiling has an original moulded plaster cornice and ornamental plasterwork oval made up of moulded oak leaves. The dining room and the chamber above include the remains of moulded plaster cornices both of which appear to suggest that part of tne rooms were partitioned off as closets or lobbies. Both chimneypieces here are replacements. The kitchen has a high ceiling carried on exposed axial beams and although the fireplace is blocked its chamfered and step-stopped oak lintel is exposed. The roof is carried on original A-frame trusses with pegged and spike lap-jointed collars. In fact some of the rear principals curve into the wall like crucks with short feet. From each end of the front brick walls project forward then return across the front enclosing the front garden. They were probably built at the same time as the house but most has been rebuilt. Only the east side and the front gate posts appear to be original. The gate posts are square in section and have volcanic ashlar caps with ball finials. Fordmoor Farmhouse is a remarkably well-preserved late C17 house, an early example for Devon of a brick country mansion. Indeed it must be one of the earliest. The Ford family lived on the site from the reign of Henry II until 1702. They probably built the house in the late C17 and in the early c18 it was occupied by Charles Philpot, esquire. Source: Edwin S. Chalk. Early brick buildings in Devon and Cornwall, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries, No. 22 Part 1 (1920 - 21) pp. 55 - 56.

Listing NGR: ST0584003229

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

86879

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Chalk, E S, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries in Early Brick Buildings in Devon and Cornwall, Vol. 22, (1920-21), 55-56

End of official list entry

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