Description

SX 69 NE SPREYTON COMBE LANE

1/262 Combe Farmhouse

II*

Farmhouse, former Dartmoor longhouse type. Early C16 with major C17 improvements,
modernised circa 1960 when shippon was converted and brought into domestic use.
Plastered cob on stone rubble footings; granite and cob stacks, the former (to the
hall) with its orignal granite ashlar chimneyshaft; thatch roof.
Plan and development: L-shaped building. The main block faces north-west and is
built down the hillslope. It has a 4-room-and-through-passage plan facing north-
west. Uphill at the right (south-west) end the inner room parlour has an end stack
serving ground and first floor rooms. The hall has an axial stack backing onto the
passage. Circa 1960 the passage front doorway was blocked and the shippon end
converted to 2 rooms, the inner with a projecting front lateral stack of that date.
At the same time a new front doorway was inserted into the left end room. Kitchen
block projects forward at right angles from the inner room and it overlaps the hall
a little. It has a large gable-end stack. The original early C16 house was open to
the roof from end to end, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth
fire. Usually the process by which the fireplaces were inserted and the rooms
floored was a progressive piecemeal process leaving the hall open until the early or
mid C17. If that process had been happening here all evidence was removed in a
major mid C17 refurbishment. The hall and inner room fireplaces and ceiling beams
all seem to be the result of a single building phase. The kitchen block was added
about the same time and was quite likely part of the same scheme. Nothing earlier
than circa 1960 shows in the shippon end. House is 2 storeys throughout.
Exterior: main block has a 2-window front of C20 casements without glazing bars and
more similar windows to rear. The single front ground floor window is blocking the
passage doorway. Circa 1960 doorway to converted shippon contains a door of that
date behind a contemporary gabled porch. Main roof is hipped to left and half-
hipped to right. The kitchen block is gable-ended and heavily buttressed.
Good interior: the mid C17 hall and inner room are separated by a cob crosswall.
The hall fireplace is built of Cocktree ashlar (now lined with C20 stone) and has a
Soffit-moulded oak lintel with runout stops. The axial beam has double ovolo
mouldings with bar-runout stops and plain joists. The contemporary oak doorframe
from hall to inner room has an ovolo-moulded surround with exaggerated scroll stops.
The inner room parlour fireplace oak lintel is ogee-moulded with step stops (A date
of 1701 inscribed on the lintel is surely secondary). There is a smaller version of
the fireplace above. Parlour ceiling carried on half beams each end, both with
filletted ogee mouldings and bar-runout stops. In the kitchen the fireplace is
blocked and the crossbeam is soffit-chamfered with one scroll stop exposed. The
roof over this block is carried on 2 mid C17 A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed
collars. An C18 cupboard with panelled doors in the parlour and possibly C17, maybe
C18, first floor doorframe with scratch-moulded, almost reeded, surround. Roof over
inner room, hall and passage is late medieval. There are 3 face-pegged jointed
crucks with cambered collars and small triangular yokes (Alcock's apex type L1).
The truss over the hall is of larger scantling and has chamfered arch braces but
part of it has been cut through to accommodate the C20 stairs. All 3 trusses and
the hip cruck are heavily smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The
rest of the roof structure was replaced circa 1960.

Listing NGR: SX6944997902

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17537427

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

• 
  Period property manual, victorian house manual 2 books collection set by ian rock
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Berkshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides): Written by Charles O'Brien, 2014 Edition, Publisher: Yale University Press [Hardcover]
• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990: Updated version