Description

DUNKESWELL DUNKESWELL ST 10 NW 5/29 Connets Farmhouse including outbuilding adjoining to the 22.2.55 south-east and front garden walls GV II* Farmhouse. C16 and C17 with some C19 alterations. Partly plastered and partly white-washed local stone rubble including some cob; stone rubble stacks topped with C19 and C20 brick; thatch roof, replaced with corrugated iron roof over the outbuilding. Plan and development: 4-room plan farmhouse facing north-east. At the right (north-west) end is a parlour with a gable-end stack with a newel stair rising alongside to the front. The 2 centre rooms are heated by an axial stack between them serving back-to-back fireplaces and with a front lobby entrance onto the side of the stack. There is a small unheated room at the left (south-east) end, probably a dairy or buttery originally. The building continues further left under the same roof as an agricultural outbuilding with a passageway through it. The early structural development of this house is difficult to ascertain at present. The house does not conform to the usual layout and the roofspace is inaccessible. Thus the following interpretation must be considered provisional and might be modified in the light of future discoveries. There are full height stone rubble walls either end of the centre 2 rooms and this is probably the historic core of the house. This was most likely some form of open hall house maybe heated by an open hearth fire and dating from the early or mid C16. The 2 fireplaces of the axial stack are probably not the same date but it is not clear which is the later fireplace (early or mid C17). The right end parlour was added in the early or mid C17. So too probably was the left end room and the outbuilding although this end has been rearranged since then. 2 storeys. Exterior: irregular 5-window front of various C19 and C20 casements. Most are earlier and oak-framed (a couple may be as old as C18) and contain rectangular panes of leaded glass. The central doorway contains a C19 plank door behind a C20 gabled porch. To left of the house the outbuilding passage front doorway is a segmental headed arch. The main roof is gable-ended to right, it is continuous over the outbuilding and hipped to left. There are no rear windows. Interior: although there is C16 and C17 carpentry detail exposed throughout the building there is not enough to allow an historical development of the house. The 2 left rooms of the house have no exposed beams and there is a full height stone rubble crosswall between them. The fireplace in the inner of these 2 rooms is partly blocked but its chamfered oak lintel is exposed. The room right of centre, the dining room/hall, has a blocked fireplace but its large size is evident. The ceiling beams over this room are difficult to explain; there is a roughly-finished crossbeam and, in the outer bay, there is an axial beam with deep hollow chamfers and pyramid stops. The crossbeam is of indeterminate date but is probably C18 whilst the axial beam is late 16 (is it reset?). The parlour has chamfered and step-stopped crossbeams. The fireplace here is blocked. The roof over the centre 2 rooms and parlour is carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses but the roofspace is inaccessible. Nevertheless it looks like the parlour roof is later since the trusses are set a little higher than those over the centre of the house. The roof over the left end room of the house and the outbuilding is carried on C18 or C19 A- frame trusses. A garden in front of the house is enclosed by a probably C19 stone rubble wall. Although Connets is situated in the middle of Dunkeswell Village and is surrounded by housing it is still a working farm. It also forms a part of a group with other traditional thatch-roofed in tne vicinity of the Church of St Nicholas (q.v).

Listing NGR: ST1409507744

External Links

• Wikidata Q17546977

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