Description

PLYMTREE PLYMTREE ST 00 SE 3/153 Pencepool Farmhouse including service outbuilding to rear 6.10.87 GV II*

Farmhouse. Early C16 with major later C16 and C17 improvements, some circa 1980 refurbishment. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings, part of the front wall is timber-framed and some of the walls of the rear outbuildings have been replaced with C20 brick and concrete blocks; stone rubble or brick stacks topped with C20 brick; corrugated asbestos roof, formerly thatch. Plan and development: the house is built on level ground and the main block faces south-west. The main block has a 4-room-and-through-passage plan. To right (south- east) of the passage are 2 service rooms, first a very narrow room (only as wide as the passage) and at the end a large kitchen with a gable-end stack. A 1-room plan dairy block projects forward at an angle from the front end of the kitchen. The passage rear doorway is now blocked. To left (north-west) of the passage is the hall with an axial stack backing onto the passage. At the left end is a 2-room plan parlour crosswing which projects to rear. The 2 rooms have been united by removing the partition between them. The former front room has a projecting gable-end stack in relation to the main block and the rear room has a rear end brick stack. There is a stair block to rear of the hall in the angle of the main block and parlour crosswing. There is a rear courtyard enclosed on 3 sides. Part is enclosed by the main house but the rear is enclosed by unheated service rooms which make up an L- plan by continuing the parlour crosswing.then returning across the rear of the courtyard. This is a house with a long and complex structural history. The original early C16 house had a 3-room-and-through-passage plan. The inner room was then probably a little smaller than the present parlour and unheated. The solid cob wall between the narrow service end room and kitchen was originally the end wall of the house. It is not clear whether there was a screen on the lower side of the passage to the unusually narrow service end there. It seems that the original house was open to the roof from end to end, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire, but the roof structure does present a problem of interpretation which might suggest that the inner room chamber is original. There is an unusually long roof bay between the hall truss and end wall. This is propped by a king post, the centre stud of the framed crosswall of the inner room chamber which jetties into the upper end of the hall. The roof structure is smoke-blackened both sides of the crosswall but so to is the top part of the king post. This post must have been built with the jettied chamber but to be smoke-blackened on both sides the upper part of the crosswall must have been left open to allow smoke to circulate over the cnamber. The infil at the top is sooted only on the hall side and therefore must be secondary. The hall fireplace was probably inserted in the mid - late C16 and the passage and service end were floored over at the same time. Some time after this, probably in the early C17, there was a fire which damaged the lower end. The early C17 rebuild involved lengthening the inner room slightly and converting it to a parlour. Also the hall section of the front wall was rebuilt timber-framed and the hall was floored over. An inferior section of timber-framing over the passage front doorway suggests that there was a 2-storey porch there then. Around 1700 the parlour end was refurbished and enlarged with the new crosswing. The stairblock was built at the same time; so too was the kitchen, dairy wing and outbuildings to rear. The house and outbuildings are 2 storeys and there are some C19 outshots in the rear courtyard and a woodshed on the outer side of the dairy block. Exterior: the main block has a regular 3-window front of C19 and C20 casements with glazing bars. The passage front doorway is right of centre and it contains a C20 panelled door under a late C19 gabled hood on curving brackets. The dairy block contains original, that is to circa 1700, oak-mullioned windows on the inner side and in the end. These contain rectangular panes of leaded glass. The first floor window in the end wall, however, was introduced circa 1980. The other windows around the house are C20 casements with glazing bars. The main block roof is gable-ended and the dairy block roof has a half-hipped end. The parlour block roof is taller than the rest with hipped ends. Good interior: the upper (hall) side of tne passage is lined witn an oak plank-and- muntin screen containing a shoulder-headed doorway; this was an early C16 low partition. The hall stack backs onto this screen. The fireplace is large, built of stone rubble with a chamfered oak lintel. At the upper end of the hall is an original oak large-framed partition. The jetty bressumer is supported on a large jowl-headed post. There is an upper end bench below and this wall and the front wall have mid - late C17 small field oak-panelled wainscotting. The axial beam is chamfered with step stops. The 2 rooms of the parlour crosswing have been trade into one. Both fireplaces are blocked and only the front room has a beam; it is plain chamfered. The stair behind the hall is a straight flight with square newel posts with ball finials, moulded flat handrail and turned balusters. From the stairhead contemporary (circa 1700) bolection panelled doors hung on H-hinges lead to the chambers. The chamber over the rear parlour has a contemporary bolection-moulded chimneypiece. There are no beams exposed in the kitchen. The fireplace here is brick with a chamfered oak lintel. A large rear oven is blocked and to left is a curing chamber (which was converted to hold a washing copper in the late C19). To right of the fireplace is a circa 1700 service winder staircase. The crossbeam in the dairy is a C20 replacement. The original roof remains over the hall and inner room parlour. It includes one side-pegged jointed cruck of large scantling over the hall with cambered collar and small triangular yoke (Alcock's type L2). The diagonal ridge is of unusually large scantling. It stops over the passage as a charred stub where the early C17 fire stopped. A single length of ridge extends from the truss to the inner room parlour. At the end it includes a mortise from a hip cruck. This structure including the common rafters and the king post is heavily sooted from the original open hearth fire. The sooting is far too heavy to have derived from the early C17 fire. The end of the original ridge is supported over the inner room parlour by a clean early C17 side-pegged jointed cruck truss with pegged dovetail-shaped lap-jointed collar. The rest of the roof, over the kitchen, dairy, parlour crosswing and the outbuildings, dates from circa 1700 and is carried on A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars. Pencepool is an attractive and well-preserved multi-phase Devon farmhouse. It is notable for including a front section of external timber-framing which is very rare in rural Devon. It forms a group with its front garden wall (q.v) and nearby barns (q.v) besides the other traditional houses that make up the attractive village of Plymtree.

Listing NGR: ST0525403122

External Links

• Wikidata Q17546770

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