School House

This is a house, formerly used as a school and schoolhouse, dating to the mid-to-late 15th century, with alterations around 1600, and further changes in the early 18th century and late 19th century. The building is primarily of painted brick, with a painted dressed sandstone plinth and quoins, and set beneath a modern tile roof. It retains timber framing and cruck construction. The building appears to be the remnant of a former hall house, originally of two or three bays, which was extended or rebuilt in the 18th century to the left and again in the 19th century to the right.

The house is one storey and has an attic. A central brick ridge stack is present, along with a 19th-century brick ridge stack slightly off-centre to the right, with two shafts, and an integral brick end stack to the left. A timber-framed gabled eaves dormer, dating from the 17th century, is located off-centre to the left, featuring shaped barge boards and a two-light wooden casement. A 19th-century gabled semi-dormer, also with shaped barge boards and a two-light wooden casement, is to the left of this.

The front of the building has four windows, with 19th-century segmental-headed two- and three-light leaded wooden and wooden-framed metal casements. A boarded door is positioned between the first and second windows from the right, sheltered by a 19th- or 20th-century gabled timber porch. A school room adjoins the main building at a right angle to the right, featuring a segmental-headed three-light window (originally larger, as evidenced by a returned hood mould above), and a segmental-headed boarded door in the return wall. At the rear, an altered 17th-century timber-framed dormer is present with a chamfered bressumer.

Inside, two full cruck trusses remain, one displaying an apex-type G feature (identified as an Alcock design). The roof features staggered purlins. A central ground-floor room has a pair of chamfered and stopped beams and plain and chamfered and stopped joists. A large open fireplace with a chamfered lintel is also present in this room. A square-panelled timber-framed cross wall separates the central and left-hand ground-floor spaces. The right-hand ground-floor room exhibits a chamfered spine beam. The ceiling in the central room and the substantial stack are likely additions from around 1600. The original layout of the hall is uncertain, but it may have comprised only the central bay, or been larger by one bay on either side. The left-hand bay may be a rebuilding of an earlier timber-framed section or a completely new 18th-century addition. A possible date of 1702 was noted in the brickwork near the front door in a previous survey, though this was not confirmed at the time of the 1986 survey. The eaves of the left-hand section have been raised, probably in the late 19th century, as shown by the change from painted sandstone quoins to painted imitation quoins on the brickwork.