Sanders

An ancient hamlet sheltering in a hollow on Dartmoor since the Middle Ages

Absorbing the atmosphere of a past way of life in this ancient farmstead is a rare and special experience; an antidote to the noise and bustle of the modern world. Lettaford is an old settlement and families were living here before 1300. It is like many hamlets, but few remain so secret or complete. Its buildings grouped around a green, some still in active farming use. The public road that takes you there breaks up into tracks up onto the moor. For centuries farmers have grazed their cattle on the rough upland pasture and cultivated crops in the tiny fields lower down. The land yielded a surprisingly good living over the centuries, and their way of life and careful economy was expressed in the longhouses they built to live in at one end, and shelter their cattle at the other.

One of the quiet gems of Landmark’s portfolio

Sanders is a near perfect Dartmoor long-house of about 1500, arranged on the usual plan of inner room and hall on one side of a cross-passage, and shippon (or byre) on the other, all under one roof. A sturdy, shouldered porch originally served as the entrance for both cows and people. The walls are made of blocks of granite ashlar, some of them enormous. This was a house of high quality, but it declined into a labourer’s cottage long enough ago to avoid damaging improvements – its last makeover was probably in the 17th century when a ceiling and chimney were inserted into the open hall. Its ancient spaces are there for everyone to enjoy: for the expert to decode or the novice to wonder at. Dartmoor is outstanding for walkers and explorers; and Lydford Castle, Castle Drogo and Buckfast Abbey are all worth a visit.

‘Wonderful house, lovely walks – heard cuckoos, saw tiny new-born foals and a beautiful array of wild flowers.’

From the logbook

The fine granite ashlar of the front and east gable demonstrates the relatively high social status of its builders. It was thought at first that when built it had the further refinement of an inner room at the upper end of the hall, with a chamber above it. Doubt was cast on this theory in 1977, when during restoration it was revealed that the roof truss into which the chamber partition fits had smoke blackening on both sides. The partition, and there- fore the chamber, were shown to be a later insertion. It followed that the stone wall, which supports the chamber, was also likely to be an insertion. Michael Laithwaite, investigating, concluded that "the massive boulders at its base are not bedrock but a structural peculiarity, and it appears not to be bonded into the front wall of the house".

Just possibly the wall was built on the line of an earlier low partition or screen, similar to that between hall and cross-passage. Peter Beacham has found enough evidence of inner rooms divided from the main body of the hall in this way to identify the arrangement as a regular first phase in the development of the rural house in Devon, as he describes it in a chapter on Local Building Traditions in Archaeology of the Devon Landscape (1980).

Such an inner room could have been a dairy. Alternatively, it could have been a parlour, as indeed it became later. W.G. Hoskins, for one, would favour the latter, it being his fond belief, as stated in Old Devon, that:

"the fundamental improvement in the dwelling house, its development into two rooms from the original one, was due to the need for some privacy for the women of the household. Left to themselves the majority of men would go on living in one room until doomsday."

As first built, there was no chimney in the hall. The fire was lit on a central hearth, the smoke from which gathered among the rafters, and seeped out between the thatch with which the building was then roofed.

Three roof trusses survive, two of them visible in the central bedroom: one, with straight principals, perhaps always marked a division between hall and inner room. The second is a raised cruck truss. Crucks are cut from the trunk and projecting branch of a tree, so that they are curved in the middle. A full cruck reaches from the apex of the roof to the ground, but in a stone building there is no need for that, and the curved end is buried in the wall.

The third truss, another raised cruck complete with smoke blackening, can be seen over the lower side of the cross-passage, just beyond the partition enclosing the end bedroom. The shippon has been reroofed, but it too probably once had raised crucks, and there is evidence of a half-hipped end gable. The beams of the hayloft survive, as does the loading door, together with the ventilation slits, the drain down the middle, with the drain-hole at the lower end, and even the sockets for the stall-posts to which the cows were tethered.

The division between hall and shippon was very rudimentary, just a post- and-panel screen between the main area of the hall and the passage, of which one section survives. There does not seem to have been any screen at all on the lower side of the passage, there being no mortice slots in the underside of the beam in that position. The present partition is of much later date.

All the above is straightforward, and in line with other buildings of similar date and type. There are two areas of less certainty. The first is the date of the porch. This is not bonded in with the walls of the house, but is of similar granite ashlar, and has the same shouldered arch as the door between cross-passage and hall, of which one jamb is original. Alcock, Child and Laithwaite decided that the porch, too, was original, and Peter Beacham, in various articles and in The Buildings of England: Devon, agrees with them, as do the authors of the DoE Lists. W.O. Collier, however, Senior Investigator for the Historic Buildings Council, thought it a later addition, because it bonded in with the masonry of the projection containing the present staircase.

The second debated question is whether the separate shippon door is original or, as in most cases, a later insertion made as men began to wish for some further separation between themselves and their cows. Alcock et al. could find no evidence of it being inserted, but left the question open. The DoE Listing officer thought it original. Mr Collier tended to favour it as an insertion, of the same date as the porch - late 16th century. Peter Beacham, too, has come down in favour of insertion.

The next stage in the development of Sanders came later in the 16th century (the lists say mid-, others say late-), when some major alterations and improvements were made. Most important was the insertion of upper chambers at either end of the still open hall, providing more private sleeping space. On the evidence found in 1977, a stone wall was now built between hall and inner room, and on this rested the floor and partition of the chamber, which projected into the hall as an internal jetty: the joists, with their rounded ends, are clearly visible. Old wattle and daub survives in the partition which rests on them. Access to the chamber would have been by a ladder from the hall. There was no staircase at that date.

The second upper chamber was inserted above the cross-passage and like the first one, was jettied out into the hall. On the upper side of the passage, the floor joists rested on the earlier screen. Access, again, was probably by a ladder-stair from the hall, presumably against the north wall.

Evidence for another addition of this date lies in the projection on the south face, next to the porch. This is generally accepted as the chimney for a lateral hall fireplace added at the same time as the upper chambers. All traces of such a fireplace have disappeared, however, and the Lists suggest that it may have been a stair from the beginning. If so, it would then belong to the next phase of alteration, which followed in the 17th century.

In this next phase, a new chimney was built across the end of the hall, backing onto the cross-passage. The existence of a chimney made the lofty roof-space unnecessary, and so the hall was now floored in, to create a third upper chamber. Assuming there to have been an earlier lateral fireplace (and it would be surprising for a house of this status to continue with only an open fire for so long), this was now adapted to provide a stair to the upper floor, with a bread oven beside it. At about the same period, a lean-to was added at the back of the hall, which Mrs Harvey confirms was a dairy, in use until 1942; and fireplaces were added in the parlour and the chamber above.

Inevitably a number of alterations were made later, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries. Most noticeable has been the raising of the roofs of both shippon and dwelling, adapting them to a shallower pitch for slate. To judge from patches of inferior masonry, there has been some rebuilding of walls too. New window openings have been made, or existing ones enlarged. Two early window embrasures survive in the north wall, where they were blocked by the addition of the dairy. Doors were repaired and replaced. A new staircase, against the north wall of the hall, replaced that in the old chimney, which then became a cupboard. Fortunately, such alterations have all been minor. In its essentials Sanders remains the house it had become by 1700.

The farm-buildings that were an essential accompaniment to the house have been more extensively rebuilt and renewed. Only part of the small barn behind the house dates from the 16th century; mostly it is 18th-century. The linhey, stable and pig-houses are later still, probably all dating from the 19th century. The linhey was later adapted for milking, but according to Mrs Harvey, in the 1930s the Sanders cows were milked in the larger yard behind. This yard, with its large hay-barn, now belongs to Southmeads, but until 1942 it belonged to Sanders. It was probably added in the late 18th or early 19th century, at a time when ideas of new, more productive methods of agriculture were filtering through to hill-farms such as this.

One of the first priorities was to improve the drainage of water around the site. Land drains were inserted on both sides, and another runs under the kitchen, to encourage water that previously flowed past the doors to remain under the surface. Some difficulty was experienced due to the fact that the ground was in places solid granite. At the same time, the area of granite paving in front of the porch was uncovered, separating Sanders from the green. The wall enclosing a small garden area in front of the house was repaired. Later, an electricity pole which stood in the middle of the green was taken down, and the electricity supply for the hamlet brought in by underground cables, so that the green was not marred by unsightly criss-crossing wires.

On the building itself, the roof was the most urgent job. The roof of the house had been renewed not all that long before with asbestos slates, but the shippon roof was full of holes. The covering was stripped off completely, porch and lean-to included. Battens and rafters were repaired or replaced as necessary, and then random Delabole slates were laid, in diminishing courses. The porch needed a new wall plate. The gable end between dwelling and shippon had been slate-hung, but this was now rendered, with lead flashings.

The walls were not in need of major repair. A certain amount of ivy had to be cleaned off the north, or rear, wall. Small areas of rebuilding were needed, in the south wall of the porch, for instance, which included the replacement in granite of a previous brick repair; and over the loading door of the shippon; but for the most part it was only necessary to rake out defective pointing, and repoint with lime mortar. The chimneys were also repointed, and the granite cap of the hall chimney repaired; brick tops were replaced with slate cappings.

The main door surround had been repaired with a thick layer of cement. This was hacked off, and the jambs and head rebuilt or made good as necessary. The frames of all the outside doors were repaired, and the doors themselves.

Sanders during restoration

Over the window in the shippon, a new oak lintol was inserted. The windows in the lean-to also needed new lintols, and new window frames. All the other window frames were repaired. Drip moulds were provided over those on the front, being most exposed to the weather, to shed the copious Dartmoor rain.

Inside the cross-passage, the masonry of the chimney stack was cleaned and repointed. The plank partition on its lower side was repaired. In the shippon, apart from the clearance of accumulated rubbish, nothing was done at all.

In the dwelling, some alterations were made, however. The first of these was the removal of the stair that had been inserted against the North wall. This allowed the repair of the oak post and panel screen, and the doorway in it. One muntin was found wedged in above the jetty beam, and so was put back in its right place, and the jetty beam repaired as well. In addition to parts of the screen itself, one door jamb was renewed, copying the existing original, and the sill beam also had to be renewed. The door itself is new.

A new timber stair was then built in the 17th-century position, in the supposed Elizabethan chimney breast, which had latterly been a cupboard. The solid treads are chestnut, and the newel posts, balusters and handrail are oak. The marks of the original, probably stone, treads could be seen in the plaster. The small window was discovered while work was in progress.

The other alteration inside the house was to take up the existing screed floor in the present kitchen, and to lay a new slate-paved floor at the same level as the hall, which meant lowering it a few inches, and underpinning the walls at this end, since they rested on the ground where the original builders followed the slope of the hill. The Bungalow Belle stove was dismantled and reassembled in the same position, but at the new level. A new floor of quarry tiles was also laid in the lean-to, where a new bathroom replaced the existing one. The lintol of the door to the lean-to also had to be renewed, and the frame and door repaired, as were those to the kitchen.

Downstairs, all that remained to be done was to remove existing plaster, to reveal the fine masonry of the walls, which were repointed and then limewashed. The back wall of the fireplace was exposed, where it had been plastered over, and the bread oven repaired. The two former window openings were discovered in the north wall, and left as niches. The purpose of the niches in the wall between hall and inner room is unknown. The little corner cupboard in the hall came with the house, and was repaired by Blight and Scoble's joiner, who also made the dresser for the kitchen.

The ceiling in the hall, which is lath and plaster, was simply made good where necessary, but in the kitchen a new plaster ceiling replaced recently inserted flaxboard, both there and in the bedroom above.

Upstairs, all the ceilings were removed, and reformed to follow the line of the roof, with insulation above. In the small bedroom, insulation was put under the floor as well, and in the partition between it and the shippon. Oak boards were laid directly on the joists of the cross-passage ceiling, then the insulation, and then new softwood boards. The floorboards in the other two rooms are the old elm ones, repaired where necessary, and with a new section where the stair used to come up into the middle room. The removal of the stair also meant that the partition with the small bedroom needed making up, where it had been cut away to provide headroom.

Plaster was removed from the main trusses, to leave them visible in the middle room, or upper hall. Here you can see both the early crucks, and the later principal rafters, inserted when slate replaced the original thatch.

In the large bedroom, the fireplace was opened up and provided with a new granite lintol. The walls were limewashed, as they had always been, the colour matching as closely as possible the former rich golden shade.

In the yard behind the house, the outbuildings were also in need of repair. The walls of the linhay, stable and pigsty were all rebuilt and repointed, and the roof of the linhay made good. The barn was in the worst condition, and had been given a corrugated iron roof. When the collapsing walls had been rebuilt, it was given a new roof of Devon wheat reed thatch. The thatcher was Mr Warren, of Lower Venton Farm, Widecombe.

The work on the main house was completed, and the dwelling furnished, in March 1978. The only hitch had come from a neighbouring farmer who had acquired ownership of the green some years before from the Lees of Higher Lettaford. In spite of the fact that previous owners of Sanders had repaired the roof, and stood their scaffolding on the green without anyone minding, he raised every objection possible to Landmark's scaffolding being erected thereon, and the builders standing any materials or equipment there, finally issuing an injunction requiring it all to be cleared away. He was very unwilling to allow access to Sanders at all, but after protracted and Dickensian legal negotiations, Landmark finally acquired the green in front of Sanders, and down to the stream, in 1987.

When they wrote their article on Sanders in 1972, Alcock, Child and Laithwaite stated in their introduction that "impending modernisation will inevitably conceal, if not destroy, some significant features". Sadly this has indeed been the case with all too many long-houses that survived in tact until after the War, only to fall victim to modernisation in the last few decades. But happily it has not, after all, been the case at Sanders.