Description

COLDRIDGE WEST LEIGH SS 60 NE 1/45 - Little Cutland (formerly Woodhay Farmhouse) - II*

House, former farmhouse. Late C15-early C16 with C16 and C17 improvements, extended in C17. Plastered cob on rubble footings; cob or stone rubble stacks, one with the original stone chimney shaft, the others C20 brick; thatch roof. 3-room-and-through-passage plan house facing south-east with service end room at right (north-east) end. End stack to service room. Hall has axial stack backing onto the through passage. C17 kitchen added to end of inner room and roof extended on same pitch to end kitchen stack. Regular but not symmetrical 4-window front with a fifth C20 ground floor window at right end, comprising a variety of C19 and C20 casements with glazing bars and including one (first floor right) retaining a late C17 frame and was originally 3 lights but is now missing one of its flat-faced mullions. The centre 2 first floor windows have relatively large thatch gables over, the window to right has a low thatch gable over and the window to left has a thatch eyebrow. The passage has a C19 front door and immediately to left is the projection from the oven inserted to the hall stack. At the left end is a C20 glazed door to the kitchen. The roof is gable-ended. The rear wall includes the original late C15-early C16 oak hall window still insitu. It has 2 narrow lights and simple square-section mullion and its simple trefoil heads are cut from a single piece of oak. It has never been glazed. Good and well-preserved interior containing the work of several building phases. The hall preserves the oldest features. Besides the original rear window the original roof survives here. It is 2 bays. The central jointed cruck truss has face pegs augmented by a slip tenon. The collar is flat and the purlins are threaded. The truss, common rafters and underside of the thatch is thoroughly smoke-blackened indicating that the hall at least was open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. The cob crosswalls either end seem clean and therefore secondary, probably late C16, and that at lower end appears to contain a blocked window at first floor level. Probably in the late C16 the hall fireplace was inserted. It is built of small squared blocks of stone with a plain and high oak lintel. The oven is a C19 insertion. The rear of the passage on the hall side has an oak plank-and-muntin screen which includes a slightly damaged shoulder-headed doorway; probably a section of an original low partition reused in late C16. At the same time or slightly later the passage chamber was erected jettying into the lower end of the hall as far as the chimney breast. Hall was eventually floored in early-mid C17 with axial beam and 2 half beams, all with soffit ovolo mouldings and scroll stops. Associated with this process a post of large scantling was set against the inner corner of the stack so as to prop both the new main beam and the late C16 jetty bressumer. It has richly-moulded corners, single and double ovolos and scroll stops some of which are incised as leaves. The cob crosswall at the upper end of the hall includes a cream oven alcove, probably C18 or C19 and alongside is a C16 oak doorframe with chamfered surround and pyramid stops to the large and unheated inner room. The inner room has an axial beam of massive scantling and is soffit-chamfered with late step stops at one end, probably late C16-early C17. In the back of the hall crosswall are 2 small elliptical-shaped recesses into the cob which appear to be lined with leather. Their function and date is unknown. The roof above is inaccessible although it rests on purlins between the cob crosswalls either end. Beyond the inner room is the C17 kitchen with a large end fireplace built of rubble with its oak lintel soffit-chamfered with scroll stops. The C19 oven is probably a relining of the original. 2-bay roof above in accessible but the exposed feet of the truss suggest that it is C17. There is also a C17 oak doorframe with chamfered surround and scroll stops from the kitchen chamber to the inner room chamber. The service room has a roughly soffit-chamfered axial beam of uncertain date and the roof above is inaccessible. The fireplace here is probably a late C19 or C20 insertion. Little Cutland is a well-preserved example of a typical multi-phase Devon farmhouse containing some interesting early features.

Listing NGR: SS6887105288

External Links

• Wikidata Q17548056

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Recommended Books

• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990: Updated version
• 
  Sussex: West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  London 3: North West: North West v. 3 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  ENGLAND GUIDE TO POST WAR LISTED: A Guide to Post-war Listed Buildings
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)