Description

MORETONHAMPSTEAD SX 78 NE 1/90 Lowton Farmhouse - GV II*

Farmhouse. Early-mid C16 with late C16/early C17 and C18 alterations. Rendered granite rubble walls. Thatched roof, hipped to left and gabled to right end, raised above right-hand first floor windows. Gable end stack to lower end is rendered, probably brick. Axial stack has brick shaft on granite base. Complex plan and development. 3-room-and-through-passage plan with heated lower room to right, hall with fireplace at the unusual position at the inner end and formerly unheated inner room. Originally hall and inner room were open to the roof with central hearth in hall. Lower room always had chamber above. In the late C16/early C17 this room evidently had high status from the decorative plaster ceiling it was given. Also at this stage inner room and hall ceiled. Probably in C18 the front wall was built out at the higher end forming a bay at the higher end of the hall and enlarging the inner room, possibly to incorporate a staircase. Rear outshuts behind hall passage probably circa late C19. Barn extension at right angles behind lower room. 2 storeys. Asymmetrical 4-window front of probably C20 2-light casements with glazing bars. Door to passage at right of centre, is C20 plank and part glazed. To left of centre the wall is splayed forward and continues at that plane up to the left gable end. The splayed section of wall has a window at both ground and first floor level. At far left is single storey C20 wing with gable end chimney. At the rear the house is recessed at the inner room. Outshut behind passage and hall. At the point where the barn joins the house wall is an angled brick stair projection. Good interior with some unusual features. The passage has plank and muntin screen either side, muntins are chamfered with high hollow step stops. On the hall side is a chamfered head beam. Hall ceiling has heavy central cross beam, chamfered with bar and hollow step stop. Half beam above fireplace is identical but where the bay begins has been extended. Hall fireplace has chamfered wooden lintel with traces of straight cut stop to the left. The roof over the inner room consists of 2 trusses with lapped and pegged collars. The other side of the hall stack are 3 original trusses, very substantial with cambered collars morticed into them and threaded purlins. The first one is over the lower end of the hall and is a closed truss lightly smoke-blackened on the hall side with wattle and daub infilling and stave holes to the collar. Although the original trusses over the rest of the hall and inner room have been removed the purlins and ridge remain and are lightly smoke-blackened. The other side of the closed truss the roof timbers are clean. Over the lower end in the roof space is a moulded plaster ceiling inserted over the lower room chamber, which has had another ceiling inserted beneath it so is now completely concealed from the rest of the house. The plaster ceiling has a central geometrical design of moulded ribs, a moulded cornice and moulded edges to the plastered trusses. This ceiling is particularly unusual for a farmhouse on the Dartmoor fringes and is in a fairly good state of preservation. The importance of this house lies not only in the survival of unusual and good quality features such as the plaster ceiling and the screens passage but also the unusual plan and development variation on the typical 3-room-and-through-passage layout.

Listing NGR: SX7432385967

External Links

• Wikidata Q17534796

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Recommended Books

• 
  Department for Communities Listed Historic Buildings of Northern Ireland: Information Guide for the 2nd Survey of Historic Buildings
• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Sheffield and the South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  Setting up a Listed Building Heritage Partnership Agreement: Historic England Advice Note 5
• 
  Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair