The Old Vicarage Including Adjoining Garden Wall And Gateways

The Old Vicarage, including adjoining garden wall and gateways

Vicarage house, now a house, with adjoining garden walls and gateways, dating to around 1844. Built in the Italianate style, the main range is constructed of brick, stuccoed, with a Welsh slate roof; the east range of the service wing has concrete tiles. The garden walls are red brick with ashlar dressings and gate piers.

The main range has an unusual double-depth plan organised around a large central circular hall. The west front comprises a small central entrance lobby flanked by the main staircase hall to the right and a small room with secondary staircase to the left. The east garden front contains three main reception rooms with a central entrance. A double-depth service wing extends to the north, containing a back staircase.

The main range presents 2 storeys over 3 bays with symmetrical east and west fronts. A moulded plinth runs throughout, with chamfered rustication to the ground floor in alternating bands of wide and narrow blockwork. The first floor is incised in imitation of ashlar, with a moulded sill band and eaves cornice. The west front features a stucco doorcase with Corinthian pilasters carrying a plain entablature (renovated around 1980, with fillet missing) and cornice with hood. Three stone steps lead to a half-glazed 2-fold panelled door in wood surround and reveal. Ground-floor windows are 12-pane sashes with sills beneath channelled flat arches. First-floor windows are 12-pane sashes with recessed panelled aprons in architraves with ornate scrolled consoles carrying corniced hoods. A moulded eaves cornice, formerly with deep moulded gutter, features triglyphs and guttae; a 20th-century plain wooden eaves board sits beneath deep eaves and a hipped roof. A pair of corniced roof stacks stands to the rear.

A lower 2-storey wing set back to the left has pairs of unequal 9-pane sashes to ground and first floors beneath segmental arches with bracketed gutter. A range set back further to the left has a 12-pane ground-floor sash flanked by dummy louvred shutters beneath a segmental arch, with a large axial ridge stack. The right return of 2 bays matches the west front in windows and details. The rear of the main range forms the east garden front: a central bay breaks forward with steps to a 2-fold glazed door in reveal beneath a channelled flat arch; tripartite ground-floor sashes with glazing bars flank the door in side bays; 12-pane first-floor sashes feature architraves and hoods similar to the entrance front. The lower 2-storey service wing has 20th-century casements and sashes with glazing bars beneath segmental arches.

The coped garden wall attached to the front left wing contains a courtyard gateway flanked by square-section piers stepped out to moulded ashlar caps with low pyramidal tops. The more elaborate section along the street frontage has 20th-century rebuilt piers to the courtyard entrance on the left, and an original gateway to the right. This wall has a moulded ashlar plinth and stringcourse, recessed rectangular brick panels, and brick corbels carrying a moulded ashlar ridged coping. The 19th-century gateway features square-section sandstone piers with moulded plinths, moulded panelled sides, moulded cornice and carved coped tops bearing relief carvings of crowns and stags. A plain 20th-century timber gate hangs within. The wall to the right ramps up to a large brick corner pier with recessed panel, its top stepped out to a moulded cap with low pyramidal top. Plain stone-coped walls adjoining at right angles to left and right enclose the north and south sides of the garden.

The interior is notable for its impressive central hall, open to the first floor, containing 6 doors and a pair of half-domed niches at ground level, with a moulded cornice, plain frieze and panelled underside to the circular first-floor landing. The balustrade features slender reeded cast-iron balusters with foliate bases and capitals carrying a corniced mahogany handrail. The first-floor hall has similar doors, niches, dentilled cornice and a panelled ceiling surrounding a central circular rooflight with radial glazing bars and painted glass. The staircase hall contains an open-well cantilevered wooden staircase with an ornate cast-iron newel post and balusters and a wreathed handrail similar to the central hall balcony. A moulded cornice and circular stair light with radial glazing bars appear above, with a pilastered opening to the upper hall. Moulded plaster cornices line the entrance lobby and main ground and first-floor rooms. The south-east drawing room retains its original chimney-piece with panelled pilasters, roll-moulded capitals and frieze with paterae. Plain stone chimney-pieces serve the first-floor bedrooms. Moulded skirting, panelled window shutters and panelled doors in architraves are found throughout. The secondary staircase has a ramped grip handrail, turned balusters and newel posts. The service wing contains a back staircase with plain balusters, turned newel and moulded handrail, panelled doors and moulded cornices, with a pair of circular rooflights to the first floor similar to the main range.

This is a stylish building with good detailing, probably designed by the same architect or builder responsible for Eastoft Hall. Undulations in the east lawn show clear traces of the former paths and flower-beds of a formal circular garden similar in design to the central hall. The building ceased to function as a vicarage in the 1950s.