Plough House The Steps

SP4631 DEDDINGTON NEW STREET (East side) 8/210 Plough House and The Steps 08/12/55 (Formerly listed as House [formerly The Plough Inn]) GV II* Inn, now 2 dwellings. Mid C17, incorporating late-C14/C15 features. Coursed squared marlstone with some ashlar dressings and some wooden lintels; concrete plain-tile roof with brick stacks. 3-unit through-passage plan, now sub-divided. 2 storeys plus attic, partly raised over a semi-basement. Left half of 4-window front has 3-light C18/early C19 casements to both floors, except in bay one where an inserted entrance to The Steps has necessitated a reduction to 2 lights. High chamfered plinth contains a cellar window with a moulded stone surround and a larger window, formerly a sunken doorway. Right half also has a moulded string which steps up over a tall 3-light casement retaining traces of a much wider stone-mullioned window. Doorway to left is probably a C18 insertion; earlier doorway to right, with chamfered stone surround, is now a window. First floor has two 4-light stone-mullioned windows with labels. Steep-pitched roof has a gable parapet to left, with projecting moulded kneelers, and has stacks to right of bay one and to right gable. Interior: C17 spine beams at ground and first floors with double-ovolo-mouldings; large C17 Tudor-arched stone fireplace with ovolo moulding; early-C18 stone bolection-mould fireplace with moulded mantel and panelled overmantel. A roof truss in The Steps, set against the left gable, may be medieval and has a strutted post between tiebeam and collar. The semi-basement below The Steps, approached from the cellar beneath Plough House, is a fine 2-bay late-C14/C15 vaulted room, with deep chamfered ribs and tiercerons springing from wall shafts with moulded octagonal bases and capitals; the wall facing the road (now mostly below ground) has the remains of a moulded doorway flanked by blocked traceried windows. It could be the ground floor of a small medieval house, but might be a solar undercroft adjoining a hall, now represented by Plough House; part of a service bay may survive in Mallards (q.v.). The building was an inn by 1774. (Buildings of England: Oxfordshire: p572; VCH: Oxfordshire: Vol XI, p86)

Listing NGR: SP4675031306