Subject:
Corridge Farm, Dunsford
NGR:SX 8135 9080
First mentioned in the 1330 Lay Subsidy Roll, when it was known as
Colrugg, meaning Charcoal Ridge. It may have been a possession of Canonsleigh Priory, as part of the Domesday Manor of Dunsford. These lands were acquired by the Great Fulford Estate after the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, and the farm remains part of the estate.
Description:
Corridge farm lies on a terrace cut into the steep western valley side of the Dunsford Brook. The long, low plain-looking house is of rendered cob and faces west onto a sloping farmyard, with two later cob threshing barns and a cattle linhay opposite. House has a three room and cross-passage plan, may have been a longhouse as its unusually long downhill end was in agricultural use until the earlier C20 and is still a farm store.
A shallow-pitched ridged slate roof hides an earlier steeply-pitched medieval roof structure with heavy smoke blackening.
Dating:
1Mid-late C15?
Open hall house with true cruck trusses, smoke blackened roof over
central part with remains of lower, smoke-stained roof over inner room.
Door frames to rear of cross-passage and from cross-passage to hall are
shouldered, latter being in remnant of plank and muntin screen.
2Mid-C16?
Inner room floored over with high quality corbelled granite fireplace to
ground floor room. Stair turret from hall to chamber over inner room, with semi-circular arched doorframe in oak. Lower room/shippon floored over with at least one substantial oak beam.
3 Late C16-early C17
Hall floored in with finely moulded beams, possibly also with moulded joists. Large granite fireplace inserted with granite ashlar wall to cross-passage, small winder stair. Small granite ashlar fireplace to room over hall.
4 Early C18
Two cob threshing barns built parallel with the house to its south-west. Both have large threshing doors with slightly projecting cheeks, typical of Great Fulford Estate practice.
5 Later C18
North barn converted into a shippon with hayloft above.
6 C19
South barn partly converted to cider pound house. Although this is disused, cider is still produced on the farm.
Conclusion:
This house has very fine carved granite and timber architectural features indicating considerable wealth in the 15th to early 17th centuries. The length of the lower end suggests that it was a longhouse, containing cattle. These are rare away from Dartmoor and all new discoveries of this nature are exciting. This would be an excellent house to record, with scope for dendrochronological analysis of the roof structure to establish a primary date for the building.
Robert Waterhouse, BA, AIFA; Archaeologist & Architectural Historian
