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Langaford House
Holne, Devon
Image right: Langaford House
Image Geograph © Copyright Sarah Smith and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.
The purpose of this project is to gather together as much information about Langaford House and to add links to Geni profiles of associated people.
- Grade: II
- Date Listed: 9 February 1961
- English Heritage Building ID: 99283
- OS Grid Reference: SX7083368717
- OS Grid Coordinates: 270833, 68717
- Latitude/Longitude: 50.5040, -3.8228
Information at the time of listing in 1961: (http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-99283-langaford-holne-de...) Langaford House, formerly a farmhouse.
Circa early C16, heightened and remodelled at higher end in early C19. Stone rubble roughcast at lower south end and stuccoed at higher north end. Slate roofs with gabled ends. Roof at higher end heightened and with oversailing eaves. Rendered chimney-stacks that at north end is slate hung. 3 room and through passage plan, with axial hall stack backing onto through passage and inner room and lower end stacks at gable ends. Screen or wall on lower side of passage missing and C19 staircase inserted into higher end of hall. Front wall of lower end brought forward and hall and higher end entirely remodelled and heightened.
Two storeys. 4-window range. Right-hand end 2-window range of sashes with glazing bars in moulded cases and with central panelled door with rectangular fanlight and moulded hood on brackets. Left-hand range has C20 casements with glazing bars. Gabled 2 storey porch to left of centre with large round arch with imposts. Wide inner doorway to passage has chamfered timber frame with ogee head, nail-studded plank door with head moulding and wrought iron hinges. Norwich Union fire insurance plaque in apex of porch gable.
Interior: axial hall fireplace has ovolo moulded timber lintel with bar stops supported on moulded granite corbels. Unstopped chamfered hall ceiling beam. Lower room kitchen has gable end fireplace with chamfered lintel. Lower room and passage have closely spaced chamfered ceiling beams alternately with step stops. The higher end of house has most of its early C19 joinery and a narrow stair hall has been inserted into higher end of hall. Lower end roof has truss with side pegged dovetail lap jointed cranked collar, which may be smoke-butchered but close inspection not possible. The roof over the hall and higher end has trusses with lap-jointed side-pegged apices and collars. There is said to have been a fire at the higher end of the house. (Information above was compiled c.1961)
Listing NGR: SX7083368717
The following information is taken from "The History of Holne" by The Villagers of Holne, published by St Nicholas Books, The Barbican, Plymouth (1977, p.30)
"Thirty years ago the road down the hill from Holne was a leafy lane, the hedgerows on either side meeting across the road. Today the hedges are kept short and trim by mechanical hedge cutters, and determined sight-seers in fifty-seater buses have an uninterrupted view of the countryside. The picturesque old house they see on the right as they reach the bottom of the hill is Langaford. The house was listed as abbey property in the Buckfast Abbey cartulary of 1240. At the dissolution of the monastries in 1539 it was surrendered with other abbey lands to King Henry VIII's Clerk of the Chancery. A few years later it was acquired by the Hamlyns, a well-known Devonshire family. The family already owned land nearby at Hill and Littlecombe, and it is possible that, if they still had any, they exerted influence in high places to get it. Although by this time she had been beheaded, the Hamlyns had kinship with Anne Boleyn. (The King's relationship with his late wife's relatives can only be conjectured but it is on record that he never repaid the Hamlyns a debt of £10 which he owed them). When Buckfast Abbey was abandoned by the monks, the local people took their carts and carried away its stones and woodwork to rebuild their houses. Much of Langaford was rebuilt in this way, a fine fourteenth century wooden arch being used to span the front door.
Generations of Hamlyns had lived at Langaford. They were one of the few owners of freehold land in the parish. Their gravestones, moss-grown and ivy-covered, stand under the old yew tree in Holne churchyard. Thomas Hamlyn of Langaford married Mary Stranger on Michelcombe in 1778. He died at the age of 97 in 1843, having helped with the harvest in his last summer. In extreme old age he continued to walk up the hill to Holne Church every Sunday. His great grandson, the fourth Thomas in succession, was the last of the family to live at Langaford. Although related to the Buckfastleigh Hamlyns, woollen manufacturers and generous benefactors to the district, Thomas Hamlyn's own fortunes were low and he decided to emigrate. He left the family home in 1880 at tthe age of thirty-five and went out to Natal. At that time all that was needed to start a new life overseas was a gun and a saddle. Thomas's new home in South Africa he called Langaford and his descendants have recently been over to see the original.
Langaford is the last house in the parish on the road to Buckfastleigh before it crosses the parish boundary at the Holy Brook. It is in this old house with an interesting story of its own that much of the history of Holne has been written and re-written, to the enjoyment, if nothing else, of those who have met here in Jubilee Year to recall old times." (Quoted directly from source).
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