Church House

Church House, Godalming Church Street

A house, now converted to office use with a flat, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries. The building comprises two distinct phases of construction and has undergone substantial restoration and alteration during the mid-19th and 20th centuries. It is built of timber frame, mostly stuccoed, with plain tile roofs. The structure rises to two storeys with a section containing an attic storey.

The main range consists of three bays with an added cross-wing on the left and a further single-storey bay to the left, together with three rear wings. The principal elevation is dominated by a 19th-century gabled open-sided porch with an elliptical archway and Welsh slate roof. The inner doorway features a moulded elliptical-arched surround framing a studded board door with pointed-arched panels, above which sits an oval stone bearing the date 1086. Either side of the doorway are two sashes with glazing bars set in flush wood architraves, while to the far right stands a leaded three-light casement window.

The jettied first floor displays leaded casement windows of three, four and three lights respectively. Gabled attic dormers contain similar two-light windows and feature decorative bargeboards with pendant finials. The cross-wing contains a four-light window with ovolo moulding and stone mullions with leaded lights. Its jettied first floor has two eight-pane sashes set in reveals, with decorative bargeboards and pendant finial to the gable; the right return features an eight-pane sash at ground floor level. The further bay to the left displays a one-light ovolo-moulded stone window and encloses an old chimney with rebuilt paired diagonally-set flues.

On the left return, an old chimney with a rubblestone base and brick quoins is evident, accompanied by various windows. The right return shows the main range's truncated external stack with matching bargeboards; to the right is castellated brick infill between the main range and an old chimney of rubblestone with brick quoins containing tripled flues.

The rear elevation contains a late 16th or 17th-century arch-braced timber-framed gabled wing on the left, with its right return jettied and featuring a six-light wood-mullioned window. On the right is a two-storey, two-bay early to mid-19th century brick addition with pebble-dashed first floor, a large late 19th-century canted bay window to the ground floor, two twelve-pane sashes to the first floor, and a hipped roof. Between these two wings stands a shorter, probably 16th-century gabled wing with a four-light ovolo-moulded mullion window on the first floor.

Interior

The exposed timber frame displays large panels, jowled posts and arched braces. Large-scantling beams incorporate stops of various kinds. Old panelled doors with original hinges are set in moulded architraves, and panelling appears throughout the first floor rooms. Stone Tudor-arched fireplaces with decorative wooden surrounds are present, particularly elaborate in the cross-wing. Many first floor windows retain old wooden mullions, either ovolo-moulded or cavetto-moulded (in the rear right wing), along with old wooden stanchions, saddle bars, leadwork and original glass. Three old balusters to steps leading to the rear left wing have been re-sited.

A wooden winder stair rises to the attic. A doorway between the left-hand bays features lambs-tongue-stopped chamfered detailing. The front wall plate is set approximately 0.3 metres back, with mortices in the soffit from former wall studding and window mullions, indicating that the first floor wall was originally in line with the ground floor wall and was not jettied as it presently appears. Queen-post roof trusses span the rear right wing, while a large-scantling principal rafter roof truss with widely-spaced collared rafters covers the cross-wing.