Blake House

Blake House, Great Warley

A house of mixed construction and date, originally built in the early 16th century with substantial 18th and 19th-century alterations and 20th-century modifications. The building comprises two rectangular blocks arranged in line, running east-west. The western block is 2 storeys with attics, mostly timber-framed with brick on the ground floor and colour-washed rendering; the eastern block is 2 storeys in brick with a correspondingly lower roofline. Both blocks are roofed in peg-tiles.

The western block has a 2-window range on its front elevation with a central front door beneath a flat hood on simple brackets. The door has 2 flush lower panels and upper glazing with glazing bars in a 3x3 pane pattern. One ground-floor sash window displays an early 19th-century frame with 4x4 panes and glazing bars; a 20th-century bow window on brackets sits adjacent with 4x4 panes. The first floor has two 20th-century casement windows of 3-lights with 6x3 panes and glazing bars. The roof is half-hipped with an early 19th-century stack at the west end and two dormer windows fitted with 20th-century 2-light casement windows with 4x3 panes and glazing bars, all peg-tiled.

The eastern block has irregular window openings. The ground floor contains two segment-headed window apertures, one formerly a doorway, now fitted with 20th-century top-opening casement windows, plus a further 20th-century window with leaded panes in a 4x3 pattern. The first floor has a 20th-century 2-light casement with 4x3 panes. The roof is hipped at the east end with a 19th-century stack in red brick.

A lean-to addition runs across the entire rear (north) elevation of both blocks as a continuous range, featuring a catslide roof and irregular windows. The ground floor includes a 20th-century boarded stable door set diagonally across the northeast corner, two 20th-century 2-light casement windows, a 20th-century boarded door with central light in a 2x2 pane pattern with glazing bars, and a 20th-century sash window with 4x4 panes and glazing bars. An inset section at the west end of the house rear wall has a 20th-century casement window with 2x3 panes and glazing bars above a 20th-century top-opening casement window. The east block's roof has a 20th-century flat-roofed weatherboarded dormer with a 3-light casement window. The west block and lean-to are equipped with four 20th-century skylights.

The east end elevation features a stack with an adjacent first-floor 20th-century door and stairway. The door has 2 recessed lower panels and upper glazing with glazing bars in a 3x3 pattern. A 19th-century 2-light casement window with 6x3 panes and glazing bars also appears here. The ground floor has a 20th-century casement with leaded panes in a 4x3 pattern. The lean-to out-shut is weatherboarded and features a 20th-century bow window with 5x3 panes above a small plain fixed window.

Interior

The surviving framing of the early 16th-century timber-framed house is intact. A prominent cross-wall at the high end of the hall features two tiers of arched bracing and a central peg in the tie-beam for a crown post, now missing. The original doorway through the partition on the ground floor remains in its initial position, and peg holes survive—possibly for a high-end bench or later weavers' warping frame. Joint evidence indicates the location of the central truss of the hall, and the associated hall top plate retains simple elegant chamfer stops. Rear hall window shutter grooves and mullions survive. At the hall's low end to the west, an open truss—probably a spere truss—retains soot surviving from medieval times. The cross passage once lay further west but has since been removed.

Within the hall area, a later floor was inserted using timber reused from an earlier building. A bridging joist in the low end (western) bay displays early 17th-century lamb's tongue chamfer stops. The eastern, high-end bay has been entirely rebuilt; the ground floor exposed ceiling joists feature housed pendant soffit joints, probably dating to the late 17th century. When the house's west end was rebuilt to its present 2-storey form, the walls were raised with new plates propped at intervals from the original plates using slender studs.

Blake House forms part of a group of buildings around the green at Great Warley.