Belfry House is a Grade II listed building in the County Durham local planning authority area, England. First listed on 17 April 1952. School, house.
Belfry House
- WRENN ID
- gentle-niche-birch
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- County Durham
- Constituency
- Bishop Auckland MP: Dr Sam Rushworth (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 17 April 1952
- Type
- School, house
- Address
- Belfry House, 9, Station Road, Witton-Le-Wear
- OS grid reference
- NZ 149 312
- Coordinates
- 54.6758, -1.76954
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Belfry House is a former school, now a house, built in 1787 for Reverend John Farrer, the vicar, with a 19th-century wing added later. The building is constructed from thinly-rendered, roughly-coursed sandstone rubble, featuring ashlar quoins and some brick dressings. The pantiled roof has two rows of stone slates at the eaves, stone ridge tiles, a left stone kneeler, and gable coping, along with rendered stacks.
The main block is two stories high and has three bays, with a projecting central three-story tower. To the left, there is a projecting wing that is two low storeys and one bay wide. The tower features a six-pane window under a flat brick arch on the ground floor, a central round-headed window with glazing bars and a brick arch on the first floor, and a cross-loop on the second floor. The flanking bays have paired narrow sash windows under flat brick arches on the ground floor and blocked first-floor windows, with the right one having a flat brick arch. The left wing has a small square window on the ground floor and a central late 19th-century sash window on the first floor, both under flat stone lintels. The tower roof is pyramidal, and there are end chimneys. The right side of the tower has a four-panel door in a later porch.
Inside, there is a dog-leg stair in the tower that reveals carved graffiti on the second flight, along with some two-panel doors.
Local climate
Belfry House receives an average of 880 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 64% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 88% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 48 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 90% of listed buildings. Of these, 29 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
this building 1 similar nearby listed buildings