Yew Tree House

Yew Tree House is a farmhouse, now a house, likely dating from the late 16th to early 17th century, with substantial remodelling around 1840. The building is constructed with a timber frame, painted infill, and a sandstone rubble plinth, with brick replacement walling and additions. It has plain tiled roofs and paired diagonal brick stacks at the rear right, as well as remains of a brick stack to the left front ridge and two brick chimneys with offsets on the left side.

Originally, the building may have consisted of three framed bays on a west/east axis, with a single bay wing to the rear west end. Around 1840, a two-bay brick range was added to the north gable end of the rear wing, and the rear wing was extended eastwards to square up the plan. The house is two storeys and has an attic.

The framing on the west gable end exhibits five square panels from sill to wall-plate, with long straight braces in the lower corners. The west gable end also features a tie-beam truss with two collars, queen struts, and a V-strut at the apex.

The west front elevation features a central single bay flanked by cross-wing gable ends added around 1840 to the left and the original range to the right. The central bay has a three-light first-floor casement, and at ground-floor level, two rectangular lights flank a gabled, timber-framed porch with half-glazed double doors and a moulded architrave. The left gable end has two pierced, decorated bargeboards and a moulded finial; timber framing in the gable, and two large ground and first-floor three-light casements, the ground floor one with a cambered head. The right gable end has a ground-floor four-light and a first-floor three-light casement, as well as an attic light. A 19th-century two-storey, gabled, timber-framed porch wing with scalloped bargeboards and a moulded finial is set into the centre of the right side elevation.

The interior includes stop-chamfered main beams. The first floor of the present front central bay is decorated with wall paintings of birds and flowers, apparently influenced by eastern designs. A 19th-century addition to the rear central section incorporates a panelled ground-floor room with some 17th-century panelling and carved figures in the overmantel’s chimney. The house also contains a 19th-century staircase with spiral balusters.