Description

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

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17547988

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Warwickshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cambridgeshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Wiltshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  County Durham (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) by Elizabeth Williamson Nikolaus Pevsner(1983-03-11)
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)