The Old Parsonage

THE OLD PARSONAGE

This building, formerly listed as the vicarage, is now a semi-detached house and comprises part of what was originally a rectory. It dates to the late 14th century with significant alterations carried out in the 17th and early 18th centuries.

The structure is built of random rubble stone with a stone slate roof and early 19th-century brick chimney stacks. It consists of a four-bay formerly open hall with a cross range at the south end, beyond which lies a through passage. The main range has a single storey and attic with three windows. A 14th-century porch stands to the right, featuring a diagonal buttress, a moulded pointed arch with hoodmould, a planked door, and a deeply chamfered two-light window on the left side. The upper floor of the porch is an addition, probably 18th century, with a single-light casement and coped verge. The hall to the left displays a 17th-century three-light cyma-moulded and transomed window with a single-light casement beside it, buttresses with offsets, and three full gabled attic dormers with two-light cyma-mullioned casements, coped verges and saddlestones.

The cross range to the right has a small cusped light facing the entrance. Its gable end features 19th-century ground and first floor cross windows with hoodmoulds and a blocked head of a pointed first-floor window. The right return of the cross range has a 19th-century two-light casement, a blocked Tudor-arched doorway (possibly to the rear of the central passage between service rooms), and three 18th-century two-light mullioned casements. The first floor contains one 19th-century casement and three 18th-century mullioned casements with blocked windows, and a full gabled dormer to the right. A late 18th-century addition at the rear of the hall range includes sashes and a four-panelled door, which was raised to two storeys in the 20th century. The rear gable end of the cross range has a lean-to shed attached with a two-light leaded casement to a brick attic gable.

The interior of the former hall retains an inserted ceiling with reused moulded beams and late 17th-century framed newel stairs with closed strings, turned balusters, a moulded handrail and moulded square newels. The first-floor room over the hall has a bolection-moulded fireplace dating to around 1700, some wainscot panelling along the first-floor landing, and 18th-century cupboards on the south side of the stairs.

The four-bay hall roof is of early 15th-century date, featuring smoke-blackened arch-braced cambered collar trusses, two tiers of butt purlins with curved windbracing, and chamfered soffits. Some timbers are missing and have been replaced, with a closed truss at the south end of the hall. The cross range was the service or lower end of the hall house, retaining a blocked central passage between services or private rooms and a blocked chamfered doorway into the porch from the south, possibly for a porter. A moulded Tudor-arched central door, now opposite an inserted stack, has recut chamfered square-headed doorways either side.

The parlour adjacent to the entrance preserves early 18th-century full fielded panelling with a beaded corner fireplace surround and a six-panelled door. A room on the west side of the stack and passage, formerly the kitchen, contains reset 17th-century panelling from Sussex, a deep chamfered ceiling beam, and an open fireplace. The first floor of the wing has doors with two fielded panels and a cusped lancet in the wall between the cross range and the 18th-century rear addition, which formerly overlooked the rear entrance. The roof of the wing has been largely altered and is now of six bays, although one possible 14th-century truss survives on the east side of the inserted stack.

A wing from 1828, originally part of the rectory but now a separate dwelling, is known as Church House.