The Old Vicarage And Front Garden Walls

The Old Vicarage and Front Garden Walls

A vicarage, now a private house, probably dating from the 17th century, extended in the later 17th or early 18th century, and remodelled in the late 18th century. The building is constructed with coursed, mostly dressed granite to the front, with flush dressed granite ashlar mid-floor bands and voussoirs to flat arches bearing projecting granite keystones. Sills are otherwise granite; the stair half-gable has some slate-hanging. The roofs are covered in Scantle slate with gable ends, though the rear of the main roof and part of the stair hall have been replaced with asbestos slate. Two external stone stacks stand to the left with brick chimneys over the gable; a large stone stack rises at the right over the gable, with a brick shaft over the lateral stack of the right-hand wall of the rear wing.

The plan is L-shaped. A two-room range at the front contains a cross passage between rooms leading to a projecting stair hall that extends partly into the angle between the front range and a two-room service range positioned at right angles behind the right-hand room. A single-storey lean-to extends behind the left-hand room, with a further low single-storey lean-to (probably an earth closet) projecting at its left. The rear wing's inner room, still unheated, is built into the bank at the rear. It is conjectured that the rear wing formed the higher end of an original three-room through-passage plan with a lateral hall fireplace, and that a parlour wing was added at right angles in circa the late 17th century to form a new front, with the former lower-end room then becoming the kitchen-living room and the original hall serving as a back kitchen. Behind the right-hand room lies a partly blocked space of unknown construction approximately five feet deep, conjecturally a secret room; the room immediately above is a box room.

The building is two storeys high. The north-north-east front is slightly irregular with three windows and a central doorway. The section of front wall containing the windows and doorway was rebuilt in circa the late 18th century with flat arches and a linking ashlar band spanning the three ground-floor openings. At the left-hand side are two straight joints marking the earlier positions of ground and first-floor windows. The present left-hand windows (two at first floor, one at ground floor) are irregularly disposed. The windows and door are circa late 18th century: a six-panel door with later glazed top panels, 20-pane hornless sashes to the ground floor, and 16-pane hornless sashes to the first floor, with much original crown glass. The rear features a circa late 18th-century 16-pane hornless stair sash. The rear wing's left-hand wall has two similar first-floor windows and a 20-pane horned sash copy to the ground-floor opening.

The interior contains a large lateral fireplace in the rear wing, now mostly blocked; other fireplaces have been remodelled in the 20th century. Otherwise, the interior features are of 18th century or later date: an 18th-century narrow open-well stair with stick balusters and a ramped handrail; an 18th-century six-panel door to the parlour (left of the cross passage); 18th-century two-panel doors to first-floor rooms; probably 18th-century roof structures (not inspected); and a circa early 19th-century six-panel door to the right-hand room. The front garden is surrounded by granite rubble walls. Square-on-plan dressed granite gate piers flank a gateway aligned with the front doorway.

The plan development is interesting and possibly more complex than suggested here. The front and rear elevations are attractive, with complete 18th-century fenestration and a period door to the front.