Old Bullingstone

Old Bullingstone

Cottage, probably of late 15th or early 16th-century origins with 16th and 17th-century improvements, modernised around 1986. The building features exposed timber-framing on coursed sandstone footings, a brick stack on a sandstone base with brick chimneyshaft, and a peg-tile roof.

Plan and Development

The house follows a three-room plan facing south-east. The centre room contains a large axial stack, backing onto the unheated left (south-west) room, while the right room has a projecting gable-end stack. The present layout results from 19th and 20th-century alterations.

The house apparently began as a late medieval open hall house occupying the right (north-eastern) two-room section. The left room (the present central room) was probably open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire, though the evidence is not conclusive; it could alternatively be a 16th-century house with the hall heated by the stack and floored over from the beginning. The right room, the original service end, was two storeys from the start and had an end jetty. The stack here was inserted in the 19th century. Clear evidence exists of a through passage alongside the hall, with the small room to the right originally serving as a service room—buttery, pantry, dairy or similar. The left end room was added in the 17th century as an unheated cross-wing of uncertain function. The roof was altered later (probably in the late 18th or 19th century) when the top of the stack was rebuilt and a fireplace was provided for the first-floor room.

The house is two storeys with probably a 17th-century lean-to outshot to the rear of the left end, and another on the right end made up of reused timbers, which is probably 20th-century.

Exterior

The irregular three-window front contains 20th-century casements with diamond panes of leaded glass, although some frames are probably 19th-century. The first-floor windows are 19th-century gabled half-dormers with gables hung with scallop-shaped red tiles. The front doorway is positioned left of centre and contains a 20th-century part-glazed plank door with cover strips behind a contemporary gabled porch on rustic posts. The two bays of the medieval frame provide evidence of its original layout, though this is much clearer on the rear wall where the blocked passage doorway and end-jetty can be seen. The 17th-century frame of the left end wall comprises two bays and includes two small first-floor windows, both of three lights with diamond mullions. The main roof is gable-ended to the right and hipped to the left.

Interior

The house retains well-preserved early carpentry. The right room, the former service end, has chamfered and step-stopped axial joists with stops interrupting the chamfers along the line of the missing passage lower screen. The upper (hall-side) passage partition is also missing. A chamfered and step-stopped crossbeam runs along its line with only very shallow and roughly cut stave holes along its base. An axial beam across the hall is somewhat awkwardly let into the crossbeam. Both it and the joists are chamfered with step stops. A rail of the original left end wall passes across the chimneybreast, suggesting that the stack is secondary. The large sandstone fireplace has a replacement oak lintel and includes some brick rebuilding, including a large brick bread oven with a removeable iron door. At first-floor level the wall plate and tie beam are quite low, and the tie is broken through to provide a doorway. No main timbers exist above the tie. The roof features common rafter couples with mortises for lap-jointed collars and evidence of hip arrangements at each end of the medieval two-bay section. The rafters are dark but not definitively smoke-blackened. The 17th-century extension has evidence of clasped purlin cross-roof construction, which was later altered to a hip when a brick fireplace was provided to the first-floor room.

This is an interesting and intriguing house, apparently a rare example of a small two-cell late medieval hall house. It was presumably related to the large medieval house close by to the south-east: The Cottage and Holly Cottage.