Berners Hall

WOOLVERSTONE

TM1838 B1456 1339/7/10001 Berners Hall 16-MAY-01

II

Reading Room and attached cottage, now village hall. 1887. Probably by JP St.Aubyn and HJ Wadling. Red brick with brick plinth and tile hanging to cottage. Plain tile roof with ornamental cresting tiles and gable finials. Brick stacks to hall left cross gable, main ridge far right and cottage rear gable. Restrained Arts and Crafts style. Single storey hall with cottage of single storey and attic. Long range has projecting cross gable to left with small bellcote, main range of hall with, to right, projecting porch and cottage gable facing. 6-window range in all of wooden mullion windows, those to hall with transom. Mainly of 3- and 4-lights they have fine leaded-light casements with coloured glass in the narrow margins. Plank door in re-entrant angle of hall cross wing. Double-leaved plank Gothic arched door to front of porch with low windows to sides. A 4-light and a single-light casement to the cottage with a 4-light casement over surrounded by tile hanging. On left end of hall a similar window with two transoms. On rear wall a further 3-light and 4-light window with transom and similar glazing and a single-storey flat-roofed C20 extension. At the right end a projecting arched recess under a pentice roof with small C20 door within. 4-light window to cottage first floor gable. INTERIOR. Hall has open roof with rafters, purlins and wood and metal ties. Stage to one end behind proscenium arch. This hall, which was commissioned by the Berners family, is a carefully judged design where the fine glazing is made a feature. St.Aubyn and Wadling were carrying out a major rebuilding of the church at the same time as the construction of the hall and they may have designed it as well. It was used as a temporary church but was presumably intended to be the Reading Room it then became. The integral caretaker's cottage suggests this use was intended. In the C20 it was the men's club and then the village hall. Laverton, Sylvia, Exploring the past through place names: Woolverstone. Stamford,1995,p5,p17.

Listing NGR: TM1830438545