Church Place

House, once used as a public house. Origins in the 16th century, possibly late 15th century, largely rebuilt in the mid 17th century, with some 19th-century modernisation and renovation around 1970. Essentially timber-framed but the ground floor is underbuilt with whitewashed brick. The framing is exposed on the front of the parlour crosswing at first floor level; the rest is clad with peg-tile. Brick stacks and tall brick chimney shafts; peg-tile roof.

Plan and Development

L-plan house. The main block is set back a little from the road and faces west, containing two main rooms. At the right (south) end is a small room with a projecting end stack added in the 18th or 19th century; this was formerly an unheated service room. Next to it is the hall, and at the left (north) end is a parlour crosswing projecting forward slightly. The hall and parlour are heated by a large axial stack between them, with a lobby entrance in front of the stack at the left end of the main block. The main stair to the rear of the hall is 20th-century. Outshots to the rear are of uncertain date and were converted to domestic use in the 19th century.

Essentially this is a mid 17th-century house, though the outer walls of the main block and the lower part of the hall and service room crosswall are earlier. The parlour crosswing is entirely 17th-century. Two storeys with attics in the roofspace and a cellar under the parlour crosswing. Single-storey rear outshots.

Exterior

The front presents a regular but not symmetrical arrangement of four windows. Those are of late 19th- or early 20th-century date, all the same style, mostly mullioned-and-transomed, and some contain rectangular panes of leaded glass with margin panes. The canted bay window to the hall is late 19th or early 20th-century, but there has always been a first-floor oriel to the parlour crosswing. It sits on curved brackets with pendants under the corner posts on top of a moulded bressummer at first floor level. A jettied gable above sits on moulded bressummers on curved brackets at each end. The front doorway at the left end of the main block contains a 20th-century door in Tudor style. The roof is half-hipped to the right.

Interior

The early structural carpentry is well-preserved. In the back wall of the main block it is clear that the wall was raised in the 17th century. There is the old wallplate and cut-off wall posts raised approximately one metre with 17th-century framing. This 17th-century framing includes evidence of former windows which were blocked when the outshots were added. It also appears that the lower section of the crosswall between the hall and service end room is earlier than the 17th century, since the hall crossbeam rests on a wooden block on top of a rail. The joists of the service end room are however set into the rail and are probably part of the earlier house. All other carpentry is 17th-century. The hall has a chamfered and step-stopped crossbeam, and the oak lintel of the large fireplace, now blocked, is visible. The parlour has a roughly chamfered crossbeam, and the fireplace has an oak lintel with a low Tudor arch; the brick jambs are rebuilt. The roof of both wings rests on 17th-century tie-beam trusses with butt purlins.

Church Place is one of a good and varied group of listed buildings in the vicinity of the Church of St Mary. The owners hold deeds to the property dating back to 1680.