High Shipley

High Shipley is a house, dated 1670, with significant alterations from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The house is constructed of rubble with a boulder plinth and ashlar dressings, with the upper two floors of the bay window built of coursed squared sandstone. It has a stone-flagged roof with stone gable copings. The building follows a T-shaped plan, comprising a main block and a left cross wing.

The main block is three storeys high with three bays. The wing is two storeys high with one bay, and a further six bays to its left return. A 6-panel door has been inserted into the second bay of the main block, beneath a tooled flat stone lintel. A 12-pane sash window has been inserted into the first bay, featuring a projecting stone sill. The first bay also has altered window surrounds, including a horizontal sliding sash window on the first floor and a two-light stone-mullioned window on the second floor. There are moulded horizontal elliptical lights above the door on each floor. The right end bay features a deep, square, full-height projecting bay window with three front panels and one side panel, framed by panelled flat-fronted mullions and surrounds, with half-diamond detailing on the inner faces. Ogee-section cornices are present above the ground and first-floor windows of the bay window; the former is truncated by the door alteration, while the latter continues as a string across the left bays. First-floor windows are placed high, and the second floor of the bay window has small square windows set into the eaves beneath a low-pitched roof. The left gabled projection is blank, except for a large square window on the ground floor within a 20th-century stone surround. All gables have cyma-moulded kneelers, plain copings, and banded end stone chimneys, the right being significantly smaller than the large external stack. A moulded panel on the second floor of the projecting bay displays a low-relief date and initials “16 GES 70," attributed to the Simpson family, along with a rudimentary depiction of deer and hounds.

A rear stair wing is located under a continuous roof of a different pitch. A two-storey rear outshut extends under a catslide roof. The cross wing features 20th-century glazing in a square ground-floor window, a 20th-century porch on its left return, and similar glazing with an inserted garage door at the rear on the inner return from the main block.

The interior of the ground floor includes a stop-chamfered stone fire with a straight lintel, and a moulded wood door surround (the door is missing) leading to a salt cupboard. There is a closed-well stone stair and stop-chamfered beams, featuring many original doors. The cross wing has a flat, Tudor-arched, chamfered stone fire in the rear gable, with a square salt cupboard recess to the right. A pair of crucks have been resited against the rear gable, although their original position in the wall is unknown.