Vicars Mead - Hayes Lane - East Budleigh, Devon
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SMacB
N 50° 39.340 W 003° 19.481
30U E 477049 N 5611585
Vicars Mead, a thatched cottage on Hayes Lane, East Budleigh.
Waymark Code: WM15JK9
Location: Southern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 01/13/2022
Views: 0
Vicars Mead, a thatched cottage on Hayes Lane, East Budleigh. It is a charming Grade II* 16th century, 5 bedroom vicarage, with mature and heavily stocked gardens & grounds on the edge of this historic village. The village website states that the building may be older, perhaps 15th century -
"Vicars Mead opposite Hill Farm and down Hayes Lane was build in 1485. As the name implies, it was the Vicarage for many centuries. Used as a school where little boys were educated by the vicar, Walter Raleigh too received his education here.
In the 18th and 19th C smuggling was a very lucrative business and often a violent reality in Devonshire coastal villages. East Budleigh was certainly a hotbed of smuggling, especially, during the incumbency of the Rev Mundy 1741 and the Rev Ambrose Stapleton 1794 –1852. Both were deeply involved with smuggling and Vicars Mead has always been known to have been the centre of those smuggling days."
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The Historic England website has this to say about the building -
"Vicarsmead including boundary - 11.11.52 walls adjoining to east and west GV II* House, a vicarage until 1852. Early C16 with later C16 and C17 improvements, modernised and reduced in size circa 1690, southern end altered and wing built (or rebuilt) there to provide a parish room in early C19, and modernised again circa 1930. Mostly plastered cob on stone rubble footings; stone rubble stacks topped with plastered brick, the hall stack apparently rebuilt with circa 1930 brick; thatch roof. A much altered 3-room-and-through-passage plan house originally facing west but now facing east and with the service end room at the right (northern) end. The inner room (if one existed) was demolished in the early C19 when south wing built at right angles projecting forward. Service end room has end stack and hall has rear lateral stack. C19 and C20 rear outshots. Rear end of passage has 2-storey (originally front) porch but the doorway is now blocked converting the lower part to a small room. 2 storeys. Irregular 4-window front to the main block. They are flat-faced mullion windows with casements and the oldest are of oak and date from circa 1690. They contain rectangular panes of leaded glass, some of them very old. The hall window left of the passage doorway includes the signatures of C18 and C19 vicars scratched onto the glass and the casement here has a shaped wrought iron catch. The passage doorway has an early C19 6-panel door with panelled reveals and a C20 porch with semi- conical thatch roof resting on rustic timber posts. The inner side of the left-hand south wing has 2 ground floor 2-light casements (one each side of a blocked doorway) and there is another on the end, this one below an early C19 Venetian window with glazing bars. The main block is gable-ended and the wing has a half-hipped roof. The rear outshots have been built out further than the former porch which has a gabled roof. That to left has a thatch roof continued down from the main roof. All the windows here are C20 casements with glazing bars. Good interior showing the work of all the main building phases. The oldest feature is the remains of a face-pegged jointed cruck roof truss over the service end room. The upper part has been removed and with it has gone any evidence of smoke- blackening from an open hearth fire. The rest of the main roof, over the passage and hall is early or mid C16. It is 3 bays with side-pegged jointed cruck trusses with moulded archbraces. On the rear side one set of double windbraces have survived and the purlin below has ancient colour, a mid or late C16 painted scrolls and part of a Latin quotation on a black ground. The paintwork suggests that the hall had a fireplace by this time but the stack has been rebuilt and there is a C20 grate on the ground floor. It is not known whether the original fireplace remains. No beams show in the hall and therefore the date of the flooring is not known. A mid C16 oak window frame has been reset at the upper end of the hall, 2 lights with crank-headed lights. The service end room has probably C17 soffit-chamfered crossbeams. The plain sides of the sandstone fireplace have knife-sharpening depressions and it contains an oven which has been relined with C19 brick. The lintel is a replacement but using a C17 moulded beam. The stairs and much of the joinery detail is C19. In the parish room wing the carpentry detail is C19 and C20. There is a hidden space in the thickness of the first floor wall. Since the early C19 incumbent, the Reverend Ambrose Stapleton, built this wing and is known to have organised smuggling in this area; this might have been built in order to hide contraband. The service end has its gable end onto Hayes Lane and from each side high walls of plastered cob on stone rubbe footings extend both east and west as boundary walls. The western wall has tile coping and the eastern wall, which contains C20 double gates, has thatch coping. Vicarsmead is an exceptionally picturesque house, and the result of several builds. It contains some high quality features, notably the hall roof. It was formerly known as Brooklands and the Old Vicarage. The earliest documentary reference is from 1513. A terrier of 1679-80 describes 5 ground floor rooms; hall, parlour kitchen and 2 butteries or milk houses. In 1690 Mr. Duke, the patron, the vicar and churchwardens appealed to the bishop for a restoration of the building which was described in a ruinous state and this was granted."
SOURCE - (
visit link)