Foundry House

Foundry House is a house dating back to the 16th century, with extensions added in the 18th and 19th centuries. The structure is timber-framed and incorporates plastered, weatherboarded, and painted gault brickwork, topped with handmade red plain tiles. The plan is approximately square, encompassing wings aligned northeast-southwest, northwest, and northeast, with entrances facing northwest and southwest. Minor extensions are present on the southeast and northeast sides.

The northwest elevation features two full-height, splayed bays of twelve-light sash windows with crown glass. A 19th-century casement window is located within a dormer having a felt-covered segmental roof. The central entrance on the northwest side has a six-panel door: the bottom panels are flush, the middle panels fielded, and the top panels glazed, set within a doorcase featuring false projecting keystones and a moulded open pediment supported by scrolled brackets. A moulded wooden parapet runs around the southwest elevation. The southwest elevation’s ground floor contains two early 19th-century sash windows of sixteen lights, while the first floor has two twelve-light sashes and a 20th-century replica. A six-panel door, with four flush panels and two glazed panels, is centered on the southwest side, within a plain doorcase with a moulded flat canopy. The roof is fully hipped.

The northwest and southwest elevations are plastered, while much of the northeast elevation is faced with painted brick and the remainder is weatherboarded. A brick dwarf wall with red brick, metal railings, and a cast iron gate extends from the west corner to Short Bridge. The railings feature a cast iron coping with simple rods and flat spearpoints, two rails, and a central gateway with gateposts, topped with hoops and saltire bracing, with a gate mirroring the railings in design.

The earliest range retains a chamfered axial beam with step stops, plain horizontal joists, and rebates for unglazed window shutters. The jetty of this range has been incorporated into the northeast wing. A wide wood-burning hearth has a renewed mantel beam. The extension to the southeast exhibits a moulded girt and axial beam, chamfered horizontal section joists with short lamb's tongue stops, and an underbuilt jetty from which the jetty plate is missing. An early 19th-century half-glazed door with two flush panels and sixteen lights, incorporating crown and bullseye glass, is located between the two ranges. A late 18th-century pine and gesso fireplace surround in Adam style is on the first floor of the northwest wing. Six-panel internal doors are also found on the first floor. The roofs were rebuilt in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The house’s name originates from the foundry of Richard Kirkham, documented in 1848.