The Old Rectory Including Stables To East

The Old Rectory, including its stables to the east, is a house dating from 1845. It was built by the Reverend E. Copleston, who was Bishop of Llandaff and Dean of St Paul's. The building is constructed of local stone rubble and flint rubble, with details in Hamstone. The ashlar Hamstone at the building’s exterior slightly projects from the wall masonry, as if intended to be exposed, while the rubble masonry was to be plastered. The stacks are of stone rubble with likely late 19th-century cream-coloured machine brick chimney shafts, and the roof is slate.

The house’s plan consists of a main block facing west, including a two-room layout with one room on either side of an entrance hall and main stair. The left room has a gable-end stack, and the right room has an axial stack backing onto the entrance hall. Behind the front block, and slightly narrower, is a rear block projecting at right angles under parallel roofs containing a one-room kitchen block with a gable-end stack to the north. A further south block projects further back, featuring a two-room layout, heated by an axial stack backing onto the front block, and another room with a gable-end stack, overlooking the garden and containing the principal rooms. The building is two storeys high with attics.

It is built in the Tudor Gothic style. The west front has a nearly symmetrical arrangement of three windows, featuring Hamstone two-light windows with hollow-chamfered mullions, hoodmoulds, and timber casements with glazing bars. The centre bay is slightly projected and gabled, with an attic window containing the main doorway: a Hamstone Tudor arch with a moulded surround and hoodmould, housing part-glazed panelled double doors. A smaller side light with its own hoodmould is alongside. A dripcourse runs above the first-floor level. A plain Hamstone eaves cornice is present. The roof is gable-ended, with shaped kneelers and coping. The front and right-end gables feature carved apex finials. Similar fenestration is found around the rest of the house, including a two-by-two window arrangement on the south (garden) front. This includes a canted bay window on the ground floor right, and other ground-floor windows large enough to function as French windows.

The interior remains largely original, according to the owners, with plentiful original joinery and detail. To the rear (east) is a service courtyard with stables and a coach house, built in the same style as the main house and incorporating Tudor style Hamstone windows. The Old Rectory is part of a group of listed buildings in the centre of Offwell village, most of which were commissioned by Bishop Copleston in the early 19th century.