Yew Tree House And Amberley

Yew Tree House and Amberley

A house now divided into two dwellings, located on the north side of Finningham Church Lane. The building dates from the mid-16th century with significant alterations and extensions in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, further changes in the 19th century including reroofing, and 20th-century modifications.

The main structure is timber-framed and plastered with steeply pitched slate roofs. The principal range comprises six bays with a 3-bay service wing to the left, creating a T-shaped plan. All sections are two storeys with attics.

The original mid-16th-century layout was a 3-cell cross passage plan with a service end to the right and a smoke hood positioned in the bay between hall and parlour. During alterations, a stack was inserted in the cross passage and lower bay of the hall, and a lobby entrance was created. The rooms were reorganised with the parlour relocated to the right, and the partition to the smoke bay was removed to enlarge the hall.

The ground floor features a lobby entrance to the right of centre with a part-glazed, part-raised 6-panelled architraved door in a 19th-century trellissed porch with colonnettes supporting a key-blocked depressed arch with wavy bargeboards. The secondary parlour has a transomed 3-light part-opening metal-frame casement; the hall has a similar window with smaller panes, moulded frames and hoodboards. The original parlour is accessed by a half-glazed, half-panelled architraved door with a moulded broken pediment, and has a matching 3-light window.

The first floor displays three 3-light windows with central leaded panes and outer metal-frame glazing bar lights, all with moulded frames. Panelled pargetting adorns the front, including two high-quality late 17th or early 18th-century oval panels: one depicting grapes with a raised border, the other a fig tree with a wreathed border. Boxed eaves run throughout, with an inserted axial ridge stack to the right of centre with an oversailing cap. The right end of the ground floor contains an early 18th-century architraved glazing bar sash window.

To the rear, an exposed 3-light diamond-mullioned window and a 2-light leaded window on the first floor are visible. A 20th-century gabled dormer occupies the centre, with a lean-to outshut adjoining it. The service end features a 17th-century external stack and a low 19th-century clay lump and brick backhouse with a half-glazed, half-panelled door.

The left gable end accommodates a 3-bay service wing now called Amberley. Its outer elevation contains an entrance with a half-glazed half-panelled door and a 20th-century porch, supplemented by mixed part-opening glazing bar casements with hoodboards. The first floor has an early 3-light metal-frame leaded casement, with two 19th-century external stacks featuring offsets. Wavy bargeboards decorate the gable end. The rear elevation shows 18th-century 2 and 3-light leaded casements, transomed on the first floor.

The interior reveals close studding with midrail throughout. The original parlour contains stop-chamfered binding beams with run-out stops and a fireplace bressumer. An 18th-century corner cupboard with fluted pilasters stands against the wall, its scrolled key-blocked depressed arch displaying painted seraphs in the spandrels.

The hall features chamfered jowled storey posts and a cross axial binding beam, with an inserted binding beam in the smoke bay. A 4-centred arched door head to the rear serves the cross passage entrance. Early 18th-century bolection panelling covers the fireplace and door to the lobby, with box cornices completing the scheme. A broad early 18th-century staircase with barley sugar and vase balusters—four clustered at the newel—and a moulded handrail ascends from this space.

The secondary parlour contains 18th-century raised fielded panelling with a cornice running around the boxed axial binding beam, and a 19th-century reeded fireplace.

The first floor incorporates 3-light diamond-mullioned window openings with cranked arched bracing in the walls. Arched braces supporting cambered tie beams have been removed during reroofing.

The service wing shows altered framing with ogee and bar-stopped binding beams, joists and mid-rails.