Dartmoor longhouse

[5] Higher Uppacott, one of very few remaining longhouses to retain its original unaltered shippon (cattle-shed) and medieval thatch, is a Grade I listed building, and is now owned by the Dartmoor National Park Authority.

The longhouse consists of a long, single-storey gable-ended granite structure built lengthwise down the slope of a hill, with a central 'cross-passage' dividing it into two rooms, sometimes partitioned with a screen.

Later in the medieval period, separation from the animals was increased with the introduction of enclosed stone fireplaces and upper floors inserted to create private bedrooms, while the roofspace above the shippen was often used as a hayloft or store.

[4][6] The medieval Welsh tale The Dream of Rhonabwy from the 12th or 13th century vividly describes the interior[4] of "an old pitch black hall": Inside they saw a bumpy pitted floor: where there were bumps a man could scarcely stand, so slimy was this floor with cow dung and urine, and where there were holes a man might sink to his instep in the mixture of water and urine, and it was all strewn with holly stems whose tips the cattle had been eating.

Substantial inglenook fireplaces and chimneys were also added, along with adjoining dairies, staircases and linhays and can be seen at many of the surviving Dartmoor longhouses today (see Ancient Tenements) which often have roofs replaced with local or Welsh slate, mainly in the nineteenth century.