Description

SX 78 NW CHAGFORD

4/89 Yellam

22.2.67
- II*

House, former farmhouse. Probably late C15 or early C16 with major later C16 and C17
improvements including a major mid C17 refurbishment, late C19 modernisation.
Whitewashed granite rubble; granite stacks with granite ashlar chimney shafts;
thatch roof.
Plan and development: long building built down a slope and facing north-west. It
has a 4-room-and-through-passage plan with the inner room well terraced into the
slope at the right (south-west) end. It has a disused end stack. The hall has an
axial stack backing onto the passage. The alcove projecting to front left of the
fireplace is shallow but probably housed a winder stair before a stair built in an
outshot to rear of the hall. On the lower side of the passage is an unheated dairy
with a corridor along the front to a parlour with an end stack. The present plan is
the result of a major mid C17 refurbishment of an earlier house and although the
evidence is not positive it is likely that the earlier house was a Dartmoor longhouse
with a shippon where now the dairy and parlour are and the hall then open to the
roof. It is now 2 storeys with attics over the hall and inner room.
Exterior: irregular 5-window front of C19 and C20 casements with glazing bars. The
front passage doorway contains a C20 plank door behind a contemporary flat-roofed
granite porch. Roof is gable-ended. The right end wall is blind although there are
blocked small attic windows which still contain their oak frames and are exposed
internally. The left end wall contains a small first floor closet window, a 2-light
casement with a flat-faced mullion and containing rectangular panes of leaded glass;
it is probably C18.
Good interior: most of the internal structural features date from the mid C17
refurbishment but the 4-bay roof section over the passage and lower end rooms (the
putative shippon) is earlier comprising true cruck trusses. Precise dating is
impossible since the roofspace here is inaccessible.
The inner room axial beam is replaced by a C20 RSJ and the fireplace lintel is a
replacement too. The crosswall at the upper end of the hall is an oak plank-and-
muntin screen; the muntins have central vertical recesses and chamfered edges with
scroll-nick stops above bench level. Plain-chamfered crossbeam and granite
fireplace. The stairs to rear are late C19, possibly replacing the C17 original.
Dairy crossbeam is a barely finished tree-trunk. Lower end parlour has a granite
fireplace with soffit-chamfered oak lintel. The crossbeam is plastered over with a
moulded plaster cornice of the late C17-early C18 date. The roof over the hall and
inner room was raised in the C17 to accommodate the attics and comprise A-frame
trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars with dovetail halvings. Several doors are
C17 and C18 in date, either plank or panelled construction.
Yellam is an attractive and interesting farmhouse. It appears to have been converted
from a Dartmoor longhouse in the mid C17 and most of the structural detail dates from
this time. The true cruck section of the farmhouse however indicates its earlier
origins and other earlier features may survive behind later plaster.

Listing NGR: SX7144486999

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17537272

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

• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings, Conservation Areas and Monuments
• 
  Cambridgeshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)