Description

UPOTTERY ST 20 NW 7/94 Charleshayes Farmhouse - - II* Farmhouse. Late C15-early C16 with major later C16 and C17 improvements, minor C19 and C20 alterations. Plastered local stone and flint rubble, maybe with some cob; stone rubble stacks, one topped with stone rubble, the other with C20 brick; slate roof, formerly thatch. Plan: 3-room-and-through-pasage plan house facing south-south-west, say south (away from the road). At the left (west) end there is a small unheated inner room, a former dairy or buttery. Next to it is the hall with an axial stack backing onto the passage. The other side of the passage, at the right (east) end, there is a service end kitchen with a gable-end stack. This is a house with a long and complex structural history. Most, if not all, of the original late C15-early C16 house was open to the roof, divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire. The inner room may have been floored over from the beginning, if not it was floored over by the mid C16. The hall stack was probably inserted in the mid or late C16 and the passage and service end was probably floored over at the same time. The hall was floored over in the late C16 - early C17. The service end room was refurbished (and probably enlarged) in the mid C17 as a kitchen. Farmhouse is 2 storeys with secondary outshot behind the hall. Exterior: irregular 3-window front with some C19 casements with glazing bars but mostly C20 casements without glazing bars. The passage front doorway is right of centre and it contains a C19 panelled door behind a contemporary gabled porch. The roof is gable-ended. Along the back (the road side) there is a C20 pent roof across the back of the passage and kitchen and there is a C17 oak 2-light window with chamfered mullion at first floor level, over the passage rear doorway. Good interior: in the passage the lower (kitchen) side partition is an oak plank- and-muntin screen which may be an original low-partition screen. The kitchen itself has mid C17 features; a chamfered crossbeam with elongated scroll stops and a large fireplace which is now blocked although it is evidently intact. From the passage to the hall is a late C16-early C17 oak Tudor arch doorway, probably the same date as the hall ceiling; a 6-panel ceiling of intersecting deeply-chamfered crossbeams (one beam was damaged when the present C19 stair was inserted). The hall fireplace is blocked by a C20 grate. At the upper (dairy buttery) end there is an oak plank-and- muntin screen but only the back is exposed in the dairy/buttery where there is also a chamfered and step-stopped half beam. The roof throughout is carried on side- pegged jointed cruck trusses which are probably original. The roofspace is only accessible over the passage and kitchen and here it is certainly original and the structure is heavily smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. Charleshayes is an interesting and well-preserved multi-phase Devon farmhouse with late medieval origins. It has been little modernised since the C19 and other C16 and C17 features are probably hidden behind later plaster.

Listing NGR: ST2122808920

External Links

• Wikidata Q17547063

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Recommended Books

• 
  Hampshire: Winchester and the North (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  England's Post-War Listed Buildings
• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)