Strattenborough Castle

1. WATCHFIELD HIGHWORTH ROAD Strattenborough Castle SU 29 SW 1/80

II

2. Dated 1792 on the N front to the left of the main door above a ground floor window Built to double as a working farm and a Gothick eye-catcher for Coleshill House. Rubble stone and brick with dressed stone quoins and openings. The farmhouse faces its yard to the S, but its N front rises above the dwelling's roofline to form a wall with 2 castellated projecting sham towers, one square the other polygonal. The combination of materials suggests either a late C18 sensitivity to the organic growth of a building: brick additions to an earlier, stone structure or a complete rehabilitation at a much later date. The whole N facade is punctuated by mullioned and cross mullioned windows, some blind, others with 9 pane sashes. Other features include single and cruciform arrowslits, elaborate string coursing and stone arched surrounds with brick infil. A wall from the main block links it on the E with a stepped gabled barn. This is symmetrically balanced to the W by another, larger, barn with a gabled stone tiled roof which is set further back and has a N end with an enormous sham window of 5 lights, partly ruinous, all bricked in . Below this 'window' is a genuine C11 Norman tympanum and above it, set in brick, the date 1794.

Listing NGR: SU2373892152