Bridgefoot House

Bridgefoot House

House dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, with alterations made in the 17th and 18th centuries. The building is timber framed, plastered with some painted brick, and roofed with handmade red plain tiles.

The structure comprises a complex plan of multiple components. The main hall range, facing northwest, dates to the late 16th century and has an external stack to the rear. To the right of this is a 2-bay crosswing from the 15th century, with an 18th-century external stack to the rear. An extension adjoining this crosswing, built in the early 17th century, contains one long and one short bay with an internal stack at its end. Beyond this is a single-storey extension. To the left of the hall range stands a 3-bay crosswing that projects to both front and rear, dating to the late 16th century and originally having an external stack to its left. A stair annexe occupies the angle to the front right of this crosswing. Two parallel extensions to the left of this crosswing, dating to the 18th century, enclose the stack. A closet annex is positioned to the rear of the hall range to the left of the stack, and a jettied annex lies to the rear of the hall range to the right of the stack. At the right end, a 20th-century single-storey link with a flat roof connects the house to a large ancillary building to the southeast.

The building is 2 storeys with attics. Fenestration is scattered throughout, consisting mostly of late 19th-century sashes and casements, but including a ground-floor window near the left end with an 18th or 19th-century horizontal sash of 18 lights, a first-floor window in the left crosswing with an early 18th-century sash of 12 lights with crown glass, and an incomplete 18th-century casement in a hipped dormer over the hall range with rectangular leaded lights. An early 18th-century door with 6 fielded panels is positioned in the left crosswing, set within a doorcase featuring fluted jambs, 2 fielded panels above, and a flat canopy with a panelled soffit and moulded edge on heavy scrolled brackets.

The roof of the left crosswing was raised approximately 0.5 metre in the mid-17th century, with both pairs of wallplates visible externally. The right crosswing exhibits externally one collar of its crownpost roof. The roof of the hall range extends from the ridge of one crosswing to the ridge of the other.

The hall range contains on the ground floor a wide wood-burning hearth. At the left end is late 16th-century oak panelling. At the right end is a re-sited early 16th-century oak screen with chamfered muntins and middle rail, alongside a chamfered axial beam with lamb's tongue stops and joists plastered to the soffit. The upper storey is extensively lined with early 18th-century pine panelling, with contemporary moulded plaster coving round the ceiling and a white marble fire surround with simple roll moulding (disused). The roof is of side-purlin construction, formerly with raking struts to the principals and paired arched braces to the purlins; some structural elements were removed to create attic space.

The right crosswing features jowled posts and curved braces trenched outside the studding. It has a chamfered binding beam with mortices for a removed central partition. At the first-floor rear is a shutter rebate and diamond mortices for an unglazed window. The roof is a complete crownpost form with axial braces.

The extension to the right exhibits jowled posts, a cambered tiebeam, and one chamfered brace at the front; no mortices for an equivalent brace exist at the rear.

The left crosswing is larger in all dimensions than the preceding parts. It contains empty mortices in the binding beam for a former partition between the middle and rear bays, later re-partitioned between the middle and front bays to form an entrance-hall. Plain joists of horizontal section are partly exposed in the front bay. Late 16th-century oak panelling lines both ground and first floors. Two late 16th-century wood-burning hearths with depressed arches, stripped of plaster, are present. Above the ground-floor hearth, painted on plaster, is a late 16th-century text from the Geneva Bible, Psalm 1-4. Above the first-floor hearth is a similar text, Psalm 114.

This house retains an unusually large number of early features, both internal and external. It is recorded in the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHM), item 48.