The Leadenporch House

SP4631 DEDDINGTON NEW STREET (East side) 8/205 The Leadenporch House 08/12/55 (Formerly listed as Leadenporch House) GV I Substantial farmhouse now house. Early C14, re-modelled mid/late C17, altered and extended early C19. Coursed squared marlstone with ashlar dressings; Stonesfield-slate and Welsh-slate roofs with brick stacks. Hall house altered to 3-unit through-passage plan, later extended to rear. 2 storeys. 3-window front, rising from a deep chamfered medieval plinth, has limestone ovolo-moulded mullioned windows with labels, of 3 lights at first floor but of 5, 4 and 4 lights at ground floor. Between bays 2 and 3 is a tall marlstone 2-light transomed window, now blocked, with cusped heads to the lights and blind tracery; the marlstone doorway to right of it has pointed arch with continuous mouldings below a moulded hood with head stops; both features are early C14. To extreme left is a small mutilated corbel which may be medieval. Right end wall includes the chamfered jamb of an opening or arch plus a C19 Gothick doorway. Steep-pitched roof has stacks to both gables and aligned to left of the through passage. Rear includes 2 ovolo-moulded wood-mullioned 3-light windows, an early-C19 2-light casement, and a tall pointed window which is probably C19 but may replace an earlier window. Rear wing, returning from rebuilt left gable wall, is probably early C19 but may incorporate part of a C17 stair projection; it has segmental-arched casements. Interior: former hall now contains a very wide inglenook fireplace with a cambered chamfered bressumer, and has an inserted floor with cased spine and lateral beams. "Parlour" bay has a cellar with C17 chamfered joists and beam. Service bay has elaborate plasterwork and a marble fireplace of c.1840. The fine medieval roof (2 bays over the service end and 3 narrower bays over the hall) has raised-cruck trusses with apex saddles, arch-braced collars, and king posts strutted to the principals and originally having thin curved braces rising to the ridge beam (only one of which survives). The 2 rows of through purlins are supported by curved windbraces, the lower braces now absent over the service end. Above the collars all principals have stop-splayed scarf joints with under-squinted and sallied abutments. The hall trusses are heavily soot encrusted, but the remaining trusses are also blackened to a lesser extent despite the presence of a timber-framed infill to the dividing truss. The purlins over the "parlour" section are probably C17 but may have replaced an earlier roof, possibly formed as a cross-wing. One of the earliest and most complete medieval hall houses of the Banbury region. (Buildings of England: Oxfordshire: p571; VCH: Oxfordshire: Vol XI, p96; R.B. Wood-Jones: Traditional Domestic Architecture of the Banbury Region: 1963, pp31-36)

Listing NGR: SP4668031405