Layfield House

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 7 June 2023 to amend the description, add a reference to Selected sources and to reformat the text to current standards.

NZ 41 SW SP/244 0/244

EGGLESCLIFFE URLAY NOOK ROAD Layfield House

(Formerly listed as Leyfield House)

II

Railway worker’s house, circa 1840, for the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR). Built of dark red brick in English garden wall bond, generally five courses of stretchers to one of headers. Welsh slate roof with overhanging eaves; brick and stone stacks. The house is of one and a half storeys rising from a slight plinth, being of four bays with windows with a small, single-storey entrance bay to the left (north-west). The entrance bay has a boarded door and a four-pane overlight. The sash windows have glazing bars and are set in six-inch reveals with slightly-cambered gauged brick arches and projecting, bracketed stone cills. To the first floor, facing the road, there are shorter trompe l'oeil windows. These have similar cills but without brackets. The road elevation retains a S&DR ceramic plate marked ‘D 13’. There are two chimneys to the ridge, one to the centre is brick, that to the right (south-east) gable also being brick, but with a stone cornice. Upper windows to the gable ends are nine-pane sashes. Later rear extensions are not of special interest.

Layfield House’s original narrow footprint was the result of being built between the S&DR’s Yarm branch line and the road. It was built in two stages, the earliest being the slightly smaller pair of south-eastern bays, this thought to be that shown on the 1841 Tithe Map, the full four bays being shown on the Ordnance Survey 1:2500 map surveyed 1855. The earlier half of the building may possibly have been built as a weigh house for the Yarm depot in 1826 but is more likely to have been constructed around 1833 by the S&DR as accommodation for a railway worker for the depot. The ceramic plaque (marked D 13) shows that it was a residential property owned by the S&DR. The house is thought to have been sold off by the railway sometime around the closure of the original Yarm depot in 1872, by the 1881 census the property (acquiring the name Layfield House) was occupied by a veterinary surgeon.

Listing NGR: NZ4178513480