Oatway

Oatway's origins lie in the 13th or 14th century, as a four-bay open hall house - a building type with no first floor over its main room, open from floor to roof so that smoke from a central hearth could rise and disperse through the thatch itself. That history is written directly into the timber: two rare jointed cruck roof trusses survive within the house, and at the south-west end the roof timbers are still heavily smoke-blackened - physical evidence of centuries spent open to a hearth with no chimney. It's an exceptionally rare survival; the timbers at the opposite end of the house were painted at some later date and show no blackening, though they may well have carried the same evidence once.

The house has been added to and altered by almost every century since. Around 1700, its owner William Oates carried out a major remodelling: a first floor was inserted into the open hall, along with inglenook fireplaces, a stair turret, and a run of gabled dormer windows to the south, two of which still carry ornamental crossed palm leaves, the initials "BWO", and the date 1700 - plasterwork that had been rendered over for much of the twentieth century, and only uncovered again in 2021. Extensions followed at either end of the house through the 18th and 19th centuries; at some point in the 20th century the house was divided into two separate dwellings, then reunited as one home toward its end. Very little of this evolution is hidden - it's exactly this legible, layered history, from medieval hall to seventeenth-century remodelling to later working additions, that makes Oatway such a rare and important building.

In July 2025, our client, acquired Oatway mid-way through an ongoing, multi-phase repair programme undertaken by successive custodians. Key works had already been completed between 2019 and 2023, including substantial structural stabilisation and re-thatching, followed by an initial phase of archaeologically supervised floor-level reduction in November 2023. Building on this work, Squirrels Architecture submitted a comprehensive scheme in October 2025 integrating heritage repair, sustainability upgrades, renewable energy strategies and flood resilience measures. Listed Building Consent for this phase was granted by Exmoor National Park Authority in March 2026, encompassing delicate repairs and minor internal alterations, interior finishes and joinery, the removal of intrusive 20th-century partitions, a timber-framed outbuilding extension, and a new porch along the northwest elevation.

Because of the strong likelihood of medieval fabric surviving beneath the floors, the consent carried a condition requiring an archaeological watching brief for every phase of floor-level reduction - work coordinated closely with archaeologist Dr Stuart Blaylock FSA, whose Written Scheme of Investigation governed how the works proceeded. The previous phase of investigations, by a previous owner in November 2023, had already unearthed evidence: a single stone flag from an earlier hearth-side floor in the hall, and a patch of cobbled flooring with a drain gully surviving from a nineteenth-century room. Every subsequent phase of floor works is being watched and recorded in the same way, so that Oatway's history keeps being written even as the repair work proceeds.

Improving Oatway's thermal performance without harming what makes it significant meant working element by element rather than applying a single specification across the whole house. Every window and door was individually assessed for age, condition and significance: where vacuum glazing could be fitted without altering historic joinery, it was chosen for its markedly better thermal performance; where the house's older metal casements couldn't take it, we specified secondary “CosyGlazing” instead, sensitively adapting the frames rather than the glass. New limecrete floors with underfloor heating - laid over recycled foam glass insulation, and finished in blue lias flagstone and reclaimed brick to match the house's historic floors - bring real comfort without sealing the building's solid stone-and-cob walls, which are being insulated internally instead: a lime-hemp render at the older, southern end of the house, and Diathonite, a breathable clay, cork and lime render, at the newer northern end. In the roof, later ceilings are being carefully removed and underboarded with woodwool and sheep's wool insulation - work that, as a direct benefit, reveals more of the rare medieval cruck frame than has been visible in generations.

Elsewhere, the work is about restoring legibility as much as comfort. Later twentieth-century partitions have been removed to reveal the historic plan form once again - the partitions at the building's northern end have been deliberately retained, recognising that they too carry a layer of the house's history. Original joinery is being carefully repaired rather than replaced, and a new oak porch on the northwest elevation will shelter the house's one surviving historic doorway. Outside, Oatway's rubble stone garden walls are being rebuilt and realigned, and the garden replanted with native species to root the house back into its Exmoor setting and support the wildlife around it.

Oatway sits on land at flood risk from the river running through Roadwater, so resilience has been built in alongside heritage repair: Roman-style lime tanking, hardwearing, easily cleaned floor finishes, electrical sockets set at a higher level, and two air source heat pumps, positioned discreetly, providing low-carbon heating without altering the building's silhouette. At its heart, Oatway is conservation in its purest form - repair rather than replacement, minimising the extraction and use of new materials, and treating a rare medieval building as something to be understood, recorded and cared for, not simply renovated.