MDE21343 - The Blue Ball Inn, Countisbury (Building)

A former house dating to the 17th Century and possibly incorporating an earlier core. It was extended and partially rebuilt in the late 18th or early 19th Century with further late 19th and 20th Century additions.

A former house now an inn dating to the early to mid 17th Century and possibly incorporating an earlier core. Extended and possibly partly rebuilt in the late 18th or early 19th Century and with furtherlate 19th and 20th Century additions. Painted coursed stone rubble with gable-ended welsh slate roofs; late 19th Century range to rear with some slate hanging and 20th century wings rendered over unknown material. Plan and development: 17th Century 2-room plan consisting of hall with large external lateral stone stack to front and lower room to right with a lateral stack to rear; the porch at the centre probably originally gave onto a cross- or through-passage. Late 18th/early 19th Century addition adjoining to left (possibly incorporating or replacing former inner room) with lateral stack to rear of right-hand room and former end stack to left-hand room; staircase rising from main entrance. Late 19th Century parallel range at rear of circa 1800 part. Flanking late 20th Century cross wings. The building is possibly a remodelling of a medieval open hall but no evidence was noted at time of survey (July 1987) when access to the roofspace was denied. [1] The building was visited in April 2012 as part of the rapid condition survey of Exmoor's Listed Buildings 2012-13. It received a BAR score of 6. [2] A building with a smaller footprint than depicted on the 2014 MasterMap was visible on the c. 1841 Countisbury Tithe map in this location. It is sited within land parcel 97 and labelled The Blue Ball Inn, owned by the Reverend Walter Halliday and occupied by John Haynes. [3, 4] A photograph of the Blue Ball Inn taken in c.1910 from the northeast shows that this end of the building, which faces northeast, has since been extended (it originally had a single storey addition here with an archway on the northwest elevation abutting the rest of the property). The Blue Ball is said to have been an inn since the 16th Century and was a coach stop for a change of horses after the climb up Countisbury Hill (the coaches ended running up here in 1921). In the 1990s it briefly became the Blue Boar after a change of ownership and extension of the building. An existing post box was incorporated into the new wing. In 2001 it was known as the Exmoor Sandpiper. [5] The building was assessed as part of the rapid condition survey of Exmoor’s Listed Buildings 2018-19, receiving a BAR score of 6. [6]