The Old Cricketers, Barn and Pigsty

The Old Cricketers is a house with origins in the 17th century and later additions, together with a late 18th to early 19th century barn, ancillary linking building, and pigsty. It was at one time an inn.

The house is mainly constructed from roughly coursed Bargate stone with galleting and brick dressings, with substantial elements of timber framing and hung tile. The roofs are tiled except for the western extension which is slate. Chimneystacks are brick. The barn and linking range are built from similar materials, with timber windows throughout. The pigsty is constructed from a combination of rubble stone and limestone.

The house has an irregular, roughly T-shaped footprint with the main range orientated south-west to north-east, parallel with but set back from Passfield Road. The main range appears to have a lobby entrance plan with a central stack and front door (now blocked), subsequently built upon. It is a single cell deep with extensions to the rear and to the south.

The principal, road-facing elevation is a single storey with attic. The northern three-quarters of the façade is painted stone, and the southern section is rendered, indicating the line of an extension. The modern front door is to the far right, with a second door on the line of the extension. There are three ground-floor windows: to the right an original opening with a segmental brick arched head contains a window with three casements of six lights. Left of this is an eight-over-eight pane sash window with an exposed box in a modified opening where the earlier brick arch remains visible. The southern extension has a second sash of the same form. A storey band of two courses of brick runs across. The roof has two pitched dormers, each with three-light four-pane casements and tile-hung gables and cheeks. There is a thick central stack of narrow brick.

On the rear elevation, two two-storey half-hipped gables project from the main range at the northern end, and to the right is a single-storey hipped range adjoining beneath a catslide roof. Differently sized and coursed stone masonry indicates different construction dates. At attic level exposed timbers are visible in the gables. Brick is used for quoins and window and door architraves. The wide rear door is in the right gable. Windows are irregularly sized and spaced casements. In the roof of the main range is a small box dormer to the right of the pair of gables.

The north-east elevation shows the half-hipped gable end of the main range and the return of the rear projection. On the ground floor is a double casement window within a modified segmental arched opening. The gable is hung with straight and scalloped tiles and has an eight-light casement in a partially blocked aperture. An external chimneystack is built upon the rear projection, and to its right the roofline of a former single-storey outshut is visible in the masonry.

The south-west elevation has a sash window to the ground floor and a dormer to the attic, both in the style of the front elevation. A modern Velux provides access to the cellar.

Between the house and barn stands a small single-storey pitched linking range with a half-glazed door of four lights and a large 18-pane window. It has a brick chimneystack on the north-west elevation.

The barn's half-hipped gable end faces the forecourt and is flush with the linking range. A carriage entrance with timber lintel and modern garage door is present. The south-east road-facing elevation has three regularly sized and spaced four-light windows beneath the eaves. To the rear is a timber plank door and two-light casement at ground level, with three brick-lined breathers beneath the eaves. The north-east gable end is blind.

Internally, the central chimneystack of the house's main range has a room on either side and originally formed the lobby to the front door. The northern room contains much exposed timber framing to the rear and north walls. The ceiling has a thick spine beam with chamfers and stops and chamfered joists. The wall framing has been modified with added timbers and infill. There is a large brick inglenook, also modified, with a bread oven and two timber-lined niches on the lobby face.

A narrow bay to the north forms the hall and contains a 20th-century stair (not of special interest). To the rear, within the northern gabled projection, is a small sitting room with heavily weathered framing on the internal wall, indicating it may once have been external. Doors throughout this section are timber plank with wrought iron strap hinges of delicately shaped ends. South of the central stack is a large single room now in use as kitchen, decorated in 18th-century classical manner with a dentil box cornice and arched alcoves with moulded architraves and shelves. Cross beams in the ceiling are concealed beneath moulded plaster.

At the back is a single-storey range leading to a toilet within the southern gabled projection. Here timber framing of the original rear wall is exposed. The space to the rear of the central stack, where a winder stair may once have stood, is dry-lined, concealing fabric that may indicate original layout.

Upstairs, a spinal corridor runs along the rear wall of the main range with exposed timber framing throughout, providing access to rooms along the front and one room in each rear gabled extension. Bedrooms along the front are partitioned by infilled roof trusses of queen post type construction, ceiled below the collars. The truss in the stair hall bears marks of substantial modification with inserted and blocked openings, signifying alterations to room layout and circulation.

Rear rooms are at a lower level than the main range and are accessed through low doors with a step down. Doors are constructed from wide boards and some retain historic timber latches. The timber framing form differs between the two rear rooms and main range, indicating the extensions were not built at the same time.

The barn has three bays with trusses consisting of tie beams with raking struts and clasped purlins. There is evidence of a blocked doorway converted to a window on the north-west elevation.

To the west of the barn is a pigsty with low walls of roughly coursed stone sloping upwards to a rear wall. It has a crude timber monopitch canopy supporting a modern corrugated roof (not of special interest). Originally it had two enclosures separated by a low wall (which no longer survives), one of which has a stone chute depositing into a trough.

A modern carport of no special interest stands detached at the front of the house.