The Rookery

The Rookery

This is a 17th-century house with a substantial early-19th-century cross-wing.

The earlier part of the building is faced in red brick laid in stretcher bond, with large, unhewn blocks of stone incorporated into the brickwork. Some timber framing survives internally. The 19th-century cross-wing is built from red brick laid in English bond with vitrified blue brick headers. The roofs are covered in clay tiles and have brick stacks. The window frames are timber.

The building occupies a large, irregular plot and has an L-shaped footprint, with the two main phases forming separate wings, both of two storeys. The earlier building is orientated north-west to south-east and has a lobby-entry plan with a central stack. The 19th-century extension stands at right angles, adjoining the south-east end.

The principal elevation of the early part of the building faces south-west onto the front garden. It terminates with a buttress on the left, and to its right is the blind gable end of the 19th-century cross-wing. A wide stack projects roughly centrally from the roof, beneath which a shallow entrance porch projects with a hipped roof and a ledge and plank front door. There are irregularly sized windows to either side and to the first floor. Above the porch a large, unhewn piece of stone is built into the masonry; there are several other such blocks elsewhere on the elevation. The roof is hipped on the north-west and continues to meet the pitch of the cross-wing on the south-east.

The side elevation facing north-west appears to have been rebuilt. It uses the same materials as the 19th-century cross-wing and has a central buttress in addition to that at the corner of the south-west elevation.

The rear elevation of the 17th-century building has a catslide roof terminating above the openings to the ground floor, and has two narrow, hipped dormers and a single-storey outshut. It is brick built with simple plank doors, some with 19th-century strap hinges. There is a small, tile-hung dormer to the right of the centre, and a second at the junction with the cross-wing, which is brick built with tile-hung cheeks.

The principal elevation of the 19th-century cross-wing faces south-east. It is a formal composition of five bays, comprising a central front door with shallow timber canopy and metal consoles. Windows to the ground floor have gauged brick arches, and those to the first floor meet the eaves. Windows are six-over-six horned sashes with brick cills. A stack rises from each gable end.

The north-east gable end has two doors to the right-hand side: one entering into the kitchen and the other into an outhouse. There is a pair of casement windows on the first floor.

Interior

The ground floor of the 17th-century part of the building has a room on either side of the very large central stack. Each has a large brick fireplace with a deep timber bressumer and substantial floor frames. The south-east room has wide, chamfered and stopped cross beams positioned transversely, while the north-west room has spinally positioned beams, with exposed joists in both. To the rear, beneath the catslide, is a kitchen, ancillary rooms, and a stair hall which rises into the smaller first-floor dormer. There is a bathroom in the wider dormer. On the stair hall landing is a jowl post rising from the ground floor and a number of other historic timbers. Internal doors are generally modern reproductions of historic plank doors. The roof structure is made up of hand-sawn and pegged coupled rafters. The southernmost of the first-floor bedrooms has a fireplace with a Tudor arched lintel.

The early-19th-century cross-wing extension has a two-room plan with a central stair and a chimneystack on either gable end. The ground floor rooms have deep chamfered ceiling beams with stops, and in the kitchen the joists of the floor above are exposed. The fireplace and stairs are late-20th-century. In the first-floor rooms the fireplaces have been blocked and the north-east room subdivided. The roof structure, consisting of queen post fan trusses and coupled rafters, survives.