The Old Vicarage

THE OLD VICARAGE

Vicarage, now house. Circa 1859, probably designed by Samuel Pountney Smith of Shrewsbury. Built in red brick with grey sandstone ashlar dressings and plain tile roofs. The building follows a cruciform plan in the Gothic Revival style, comprising two storeys with a gable-lit attic.

The south-east front is the principal elevation. It features a chamfered plinth and buttresses with chamfered offsets, a string course, and parapeted gables finished with stone copings and shaped kneelers. The chimney stacks are particularly elaborate: an external brick lateral stack to the left has a pitched-roofed link to the attic and three octagonal brick shafts with moulded stone caps and bases; a brick ridge stack off-centre to the right carries two diamond shafts; and an integral brick stack to the right has shafting and an oversailing cap.

The main elevation is broken by several projections. A triangular dormer to the right contains a stepped 3-light casement window. A gabled projection off-centre to the right displays a leaded chamfered rectangular attic window, a first-floor canted stone oriel of 1:2:1 lights, and ground-floor paired stone cross windows with trefoil-headed lights. To the left of this projection, a small half-hipped gabled block set back in the angle contains a first-floor wooden cross window and a one-light ground-floor chamfered-arched window with blind tympanum. A one-storey lean-to porch to the left consists of two pairs of chamfered segmental-arched 2-light windows with central wooden shafts, and a central nail-studded boarded door with chamfered reveals and segmental head. Further right, a set-back block contains 3- and 4-light 20th-century metal casements. The ground floor also includes a one-light cinquefoil-headed window in the left-hand return front.

The left-hand gable end is treated architecturally as a central nave with flanking aisles. Its focal point is a full-height canted stone bay with a chamfered offset to the first floor bearing a carved shield in an octafoil, coved eaves beneath a hipped tiled roof, and 1:2:1 lights with cinquefoil ogee heads. The end of the lean-to to the right displays a small rectangular attic window and a pair of ground-floor chamfered-arched 2-light windows with central wooden shafts, blind tympana, and hoodmoulds with carved stops. The end of the lean-to to the left has a partly-blocked chamfered-arched doorway with an inserted plate-glass window and a hoodmould with carved stops.

The rear elevation features a 3-bay lean-to to the right with windows of cinquefoil-headed lights, and a gabled wing to the left containing a small chamfered rectangular attic window, a first-floor canted stone oriel of 1:2:1 lights, and ground-floor paired stone cross windows with cinquefoil-headed lights and a hoodmould.

Internally, the drawing room to the left is arranged as an aisle. A 3-bay arcade to the north-west employs square piers and moulded arches; one arch opens to the bay adjoining the porch. Shafts flank the south-west window. The ceiling is composed of chamfered cross beams. The Neo-Jacobean staircase features a closed string, pierced splat balusters, a moulded handrail, and square newel posts with globe finials and pierced pendants.

This is an unusually planned and well-detailed example of a mid-19th-century vicarage. The Vicarage and the neighbouring Church of the Holy Trinity, also by Pountney Smith, were intended to form part of a model village alongside the Shrewsbury-Baschurch road at this location, though no further development was undertaken.