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

• Wikidata Q17537272

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Recommended Books

• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of Historic Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas
• 
  ENGLAND GUIDE TO POST WAR LISTED: A Guide to Post-war Listed Buildings
• 
  London 3: North West: North West v. 3 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cork: City and County (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects, Supplement 2014
• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)