Battle House

Battle House is a house dating from the 15th century with substantial alterations in the 18th century, and a further addition in the early 20th century. The rear range has a timber frame encased in roughcast, topped with a slate roof and axial ridge stack. The front range is rendered and lined to resemble ashlar, with ashlar dressings, a slate hipped roof, and external rear stacks. It is a formal five-window, two-storey and attic building with three segment-headed dormers.

The front features an ashlar plinth, ground floor sill course, rusticated quoins, a moulded cornice and parapet. Further ashlar detailing is present on the frame of the first-floor Venetian window and in a ground-floor projecting, enclosed, pedimented porch with Roman Doric pilasters. The windows throughout are predominantly twelve-pane sashes, with smaller lights on each side of the porch, all lacking surrounds. An east-facing one-window range has a dormer, while the west end has a two-storey canted bay with a cornice under a hipped roof. A French window is centrally positioned on the ground floor, and a twelve-pane sash is above. Blank windows are located to the left, while the right side is obscured by a circa 1900 addition in a matching style, with a north-facing tripartite window (12-30-12 panes) to a studio, and two nine-pane sashes above. The west elevation has three eighteen-pane windows on the ground floor.

The rear range, dating from the 15th century, has early 18th century thick glazing-bar 20-pane sashes to the east front – one window per floor to the left, a pair each floor to the centre, and sash windows dating from the 19th century to the right. The south end has a door, a six-pane window above, attic casements, and a small four-pane light in the apex.

The interior of the front range features a two-storey stair hall with a modillion cornice and an open-well staircase with turned balusters and brackets to the treads. The attic contains five king-post trusses with tenoned-in collar-pieces, suggesting the 18th-century work might be a remodelling of a 17th-century building. The hips at each end appear to be later additions. The 15th-century rear range was likely originally an open hall with a two-storey south end. It has a four-bay, two-purlin roof with two tiers of wind bracing and collar trusses. A first-floor south-end room features a stone Tudor-arched fireplace with exposed tension braces and four spine beams with unusually elaborated stepped stops. A timber-mullion three-light west window is also present, along with a six-panel scratch-moulded door; a similar door is found in the front range's attic, with cock’s head hinges.

Battle House takes its name from the manor of Bromham Battle, previously held by Battle Abbey in Sussex before the Reformation. It was the home of Sir William Napier from 1826 to 1831, where he wrote his 'History of the War in the Peninsula'. The studio addition was constructed for the artist L. Raven-Hill.