Redcoats Farmhouse Hotel

REDCOATS FARMHOUSE HOTEL

House. Built in the late 15th century, probably for John Sturgeon (High Sheriff in 1479), with alterations in the later 17th century and a lower west wing added at that time. In the late 19th century, the west part was elaborated as a new front and the older parts were covered with red tile hanging.

The building is constructed with timber frame and roughcast on the east, but is completely red tile-hung on the south and west. The west wing has a red brick ground floor with red tile-hung first floor. The roofs are steep with old red tiles. The house is an unusual 15th-century structure, two storeys with attics, lying north to south with continuous jetties on two sides and at the north end. It follows a three-cell plan with a parlour at the north end, the hall in the middle, and a smaller service room at the south end. A lower L-shaped two-storey later west wing adjoins for much of the west wall.

The west front features a projecting left-hand gabled part with a two-storey canted bay window and bargeboards. There are two windows to the upper floor and a gabled open timber porch in the angle with the projection. The right-hand side has a three-light window with sashes between mullions and a half-glazed door. The east side of the old part displays mullion-and-transom windows, three gabled dormers, and a projecting chimney near the north end with two diagonal shafts and a bell attached. A lower kitchen extension extends at right angles. External chimneys on the west side of the old house have bases now obscured by the west wing, rising between the roofs with a group of five diagonal shafts in-line above the hall fireplace and three shafts on the west side of the parlour.

The interior is unusual for the large number of original heated rooms and the high quality of craftsmanship and ornamentation for a house of modest size that was never a manor house. The hall, measuring 31 feet by 18 feet, retains at its south end one of the two doors of the former screens passage, with a hollow-chamfered four-centred head and sunk spandrels. At the north end of the east wall is a two-light window with ogee arris mouldings to rectangular mullions, reset above an opening that formerly led to an external stair turret serving the hall and parlour with an internal lobby. An 18th or 19th-century window in the east wall occupies the position of an original window. The hall fireplace, with enriched mouldings of hollows and rolls, supports a date of circa 1470–80. The parlour fireplace on the east wall is offset to the south as if for a dresser, and has stone jambs and a brick relieving arch. Cross-beams and axial beams appear in both rooms.

The unheated, undivided service room at the south end shows indications of a former stair against the south wall with a window to light its foot. An original two-light window on the east wall has arched heads to the lights and an ogee-moulded frame. The first floor was originally open to the roof, with partitions not positioned over those below. The larger north room's importance is emphasised by carved enrichment of the hollow-chamfered jambs of a stone fireplace with square fleurons. The north wall has a range of four two-light windows set high in the wall with hollow chamfered frames. An open truss to the north of the fireplace has two chamfered orders returning onto two solid brackets. The chamber over the hall is smaller and contains a stone carved fireplace with dragons in the spandrels, and a blocked mullioned three-light window.

Later 17th-century changes involved a new staircase, partitions and attics. The former parlour was reduced in size with painted bolection-moulded panelling, and space was provided for an internal stair (replaced in the late 19th century). A transverse moulded beam in the hall is a 17th-century replacement. The east chimney stack was enlarged for the new west wing, and a single-storey timber-framed east kitchen was added.