MSO7456 - Throat Farm, Luxborough (Monument)

Documented in 1506-56, the farmstead was shown as a farmhouse and buildings on the Tithe Map of 1843. A barn, a pair of derelict 19th Century cottages, and earthwork traces of other buildings were visible in 1976.

As part of a parish survey Mr Williams has drawn attention to a deserted farm site at Throat, SS 963 379. (Throat Cottages shown as extant buildings on 1st Edition 6 inch 1891 Ordnance Survey map at SS 9633 3786). [1,2] The deserted farmstead of Throat is shown on the Tithe Map as a farmhouse and buildings. [3] There is now only a barn and a pair of derelict 19th Century cottages, although there are earthwork traces of other buildings (M Aston, fieldwork 2 May 1976). [4] Former farm of Throat, mentioned in Luxborough Eve Court Book of 1506-56. [5] It was absorbed by Westcott in 1803 [6] and was occupied until after World War Two. A room by room inventory of Throat is dated April 1716. (This farmstead is shown and named Drot on 1 inch 1st Edition 1809). [7-9 The cottages were subject to historic building analysis in June 2016. Throat is a shrunken farm site, representing a small farmstead, possibly comprising several buildings in the later medieval and early modern period. From the late 18th Century it declined, when its land (and that of several other similar small farms nearby) was absorbed by the larger farm of Westcott to the east. The buildings were put to other purposes, in the case of this house as subsidiary farm accommodation. It is likely that the house was rebuilt as two dwellings when it was reduced in status from independent farm to labourers’ cottages, somewhere in the years around 1800. The surviving building therefore has significance as an example of a later 18th or early 19th Century pair of estate cottages, subsequently modified through later 19th and 20th Century refurbishments. The surviving fabric of the house demonstrates essentially two phases of construction: first construction as a pair of two storey cottages plus the northern single-storey outshut in the later 18th Century (on the site of an earlier house, probably of later medieval or 16th Century date); and a major late 20th Century refurbishment (c.1987–1993) which saw the conversion of the two cottages into a single dwelling with associated landscaping works to form the rear ‘drang’. A possible additional phase of refurbishment in the late 19th Century (involving a new slate roof and refenestration), has left little trace in the fabric, but is recorded in the photograph of 1976, as well as implied by what we know of the general history of the Chargot estate at the time. The late 20th Century phase involved a major refurbishment of the building. The result is that little of historic interest survives in the interior with the exception of the chimney stack with back-to back fireplaces and the remains of truncated bread ovens in their northern reveals. Although the structure of oven chambers behind these was removed in the late 1980s, their entrances with corbelled arches, brick inner arches and sills, and traces of the brick-lined interiors survive as a reminder of their original function and of the original ‘mirror image’ planning of the two cottages. Although there may have been some localised repair or rebuilding these are unlikely to have been radically rebuilt as a part of the late 1980s refurbishment. [12] This record was enhanced as part of the National Record of the Historic Environment to Exmoor National Park Historic Environment Record data transfer project. [13]