Marlais House And Wordsley House

MARLAIS HOUSE AND WORDSLEY HOUSE

An inn, later a farmhouse and now two houses, originally built in the late 17th century and remodelled around 1850–70, with some late 20th-century alterations. The building is rendered over brick with a plain tile roof, hipped to the front, and rendered axial and end stacks.

The building follows a double-depth plan with integral service ranges to the rear, including a kitchen to the rear left, a possible back kitchen to the right, and a central stair rising to the attic storey. On the first floor, the stair was clearly linked to an axial corridor, typical of early double-pile houses of the mid to late 17th century. Wordsley House occupies the left portion and Marlais House the right; there is a late 19th-century wing to the rear left.

The main elevation is two storeys with attic and three windows across. It features a Tuscan porch with a mid-19th-century six-panelled door with margin panes to the overlight. The left side has 6/6-pane horned sashes; the right side has mid-20th-century 12-pane windows. Three gabled dormers with bargeboards punctuate the roofline. The rear elevation includes a tall stair window with stained glass margin panes.

The interior contains 18th and 19th-century doors in moulded wood architraves, including work of the mid-18th century to the first floor of Wordsley House, and oak floorboards throughout. The first floor of Wordsley House has a fine mid-19th-century fireplace with reeded surround and cast iron grate; Marlais House has a large mid-19th-century marble fireplace. The former kitchen to the rear left of Wordsley House retains a cavetto-moulded beam and ovolo-moulded bressummer to its open fireplace, with stone steps lined in sandstone descending to the cellar. Marlais House has a brick vaulted cellar. A dumb waiter occupies the area between the kitchen and front room of Wordsley House, adjacent to the stack, fronted by an early to mid-18th-century sash window. Both ground floors have mid-19th-century plaster cornicing. Wordsley House has an early 20th-century staircase; Marlais House has a very fine late 17th-century dog-leg staircase with heavy turned newels to the closed string and ball finials. Two late 17th-century plank doors with iron strap hinges survive on the attic floor of Marlais House.

The roof is formed of cranked principal rafters with purlins trenched into them, allowing access throughout the upper floor. One purlin, not surviving in situ, is inscribed "S.I.E" and dated 1677.

A bill of sale from 1736 records this building as the Welsh Harp Inn, positioned just north of Watling Street, the main London–Chester road. An inventory from 1730 lists a Great Parlour (probably the right-hand ground-floor room of Marlais House), a hall with a long table (probably the front room of Wordsley House), a kitchen, a back kitchen with breadmaking equipment (probably to the rear right of Marlais House), a Coachman's Parlour, and numerous other small rooms.

This former inn represents a significant example of the double-pile plan with first-floor access via an axial corridor, a type introduced to England in the 17th century that fundamentally influenced domestic interior planning in the following century. Earlier inns had relied on gallery access to chambers, but contemporary examples such as Scole in Norfolk demonstrate early adoption of the more compact double-pile plan. Such plans often employed innovative roofing systems to span full widths; the use of cranked rafters is partly rooted in the cruck building tradition and was also employed where access was needed for commercial purposes, with contemporary examples associated with the textile trade in south Gloucestershire and farm buildings. The building was clearly internally refitted in the early to mid-18th century, as evidenced by the dating of many of its door architraves. Its interest as a post-Restoration inn is enhanced by its association with an outbuilding to its west, designed for the accommodation and servicing of horses and vehicles.