Leam Farmhouse

WOLFHAMPCOTE

1724/0/10051 WOLFHAMPCOTE LANE 12-NOV-09 Sawbridge Leam Farmhouse

GV II A house, dating from circa 1665, perhaps with earlier origins.

MATERIALS: The building is believed to be of sandstone, now not visible under modern roughcast render, with replacement brick stacks.

PLAN: The house appears to have a two- or three-room plan, with rooms to either side of a central cross-passage.

EXTERIOR: The building is of two storeys and three bays, the central bay including the current entrance doorway. The main elevation has regularly disposed modern casement windows, but the southern return and the rear retain three-light, hollow-chamfered stone mullioned windows with hood moulds, now infilled. There is a datestone inscribed ANNO DOMINE / 1665 / WILLIAM / BASELEY / SB :-: RH to the south gable end.

INTERIOR: Not inspected.

SOURCES: MS 3313/Acc 1929-006/354063, Warwickshire County Record Office: Bond from Thomas Bucknell of Sawbridge...to William Baseley of Sawbridge, yeoman... (14 September 1664); Wolfhampcote parish burial records (1662); A History of the County of Warwick (Victoria County History) Volume 6: Knightlow Hundred (1951), 269-73

HISTORY: The house clearly dates from no later than the C17: it retains windows of this date, and carries a date stone for 1665, also inscribed with the name of William Baseley. Baseley is recorded as a yeoman of Sawbridge in documents in 1664, and his wife Ann had been buried in Wolfhamcote church, the parish of which the hamlet of Sawbridge forms a part, on 10 June 1662. The house, though, may date from considerably earlier, as its form suggests origins as a late medieval hall-house, though it would have been altered in the C17 to create the current form. During the later C20, the main elevation was altered with the addition of modern casement windows in enlarged openings, and buttresses were added to the same elevation; the entire building was covered in roughcast render.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Leam Farmhouse at Sawbridge is designated at Grade II, for the following principal reasons: * The house dates from at least 1665, and retains significant fabric of this date, including the envelope of the building and some C17 hollow-chamfered windows * Local precedents and the form of the building indicate that the house may well represent a survival of an even earlier house, perhaps dating from the C15 * Group value with the other listed houses of similar date within the small hamlet of Sawbridge, including Old House Farmhouse, Manor Farmhouse and Red Roof Farm (all listed Grade II)