The Old Rectory Including Kitchen Garden Walls Adjoining To North

The Old Rectory including kitchen garden walls adjoining to north

A house and former rectory built in the early 16th century and substantially improved in the late 16th and 17th centuries, then modernised with an extension in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The building is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with some sections rebuilt in local stone rubble and probably mostly brick in the extension. Stone rubble and brick chimney stacks with plastered brick chimneyshafts support a slate roof, though the older part was originally thatched.

The house faces south and is built down a hillslope with a rambling plan. The principal rooms are housed in an L-plan block uphill at the west end. The front block contains two heated parlours, with the entrance hall and main staircase at the rear of the right room. This block was newly built in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when the old house was converted to service use. The service block connects only at the right rear corner of the main entrance hall and has a three-room-and-through-passage plan. An unheated inner room adjoins the new block, followed by the former hall, a large room with a projecting front lateral stack. A narrow lobby has been partitioned off at the upper end of the hall. At the right end is the service end room, now used as a kitchen, which has a projecting end stack. The present layout results from the late 18th and early 19th-century refurbishment, when the old house was converted to service functions and the new block was built.

The old house has a long and complex structural history. The inner room end was floored from the start, providing a chamber over a dairy or buttery. The hall and probably the service end were originally open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. The hall fireplace was probably inserted in the mid to late 16th century and the hall was floored over in the early 17th century. The service end was much rebuilt in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when the front wall was brought out flush with the front of the hall stack and the end wall and stack were rebuilt. The house is two storeys throughout, with late 18th and early 19th-century lean-to outshots to the rear of the service block and old house.

The late 18th and early 19th-century block has mostly original windows. The south front has a symmetrical two-window front with first floor 16-pane sashes and larger ground floor 15-pane sashes, the left one now replaced by a 20th-century French window. The entrance front on the right end has a similar two-window front, with the right bay containing the main doorway: an original six-panel door with overlight and a timber doorcase with moulded entablature including a dentil frieze on scrolled consoles. The roof has plain deep eaves and is hipped at both ends. The old house block has irregular front fenestration with three ground floor windows that are 20th-century casements with glazing bars, and five first floor windows that are late 18th and early 19th-century casements containing rectangular panes of leaded glass, with more in the end and rear walls. The passage front doorway is right of centre and contains a late 18th and early 19th-century six-panel door behind a 20th-century gabled porch. The roof here is gable-ended.

The late 18th and early 19th-century block is well preserved and contains a great deal of original joinery and other detail, including a good open string geometric stair with stick balusters and mahogany handrail. In the old house, the service end was largely rebuilt in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with the roughly finished crossbeam and stone rubble fireplace with oak lintel (raised in the 20th century) dating from that period. The lower end passage screen contains the remains of an oak large-framed partition, possibly an early 16th-century low partition screen. Other partitions are plastered over. The full height crosswall at the upper end of the former hall is probably an early 16th-century oak-framed structure, with the top part visible in the roofspace. The former hall has two early 17th-century chamfered and step-stopped axial beams. The inner room has a plain chamfered axial beam, probably early 16th-century. The hall fireplace is blocked. The original roof survives over the hall and inner room. The partition between the hall and inner room chamber is a closed truss, and the open truss over the hall is side-pegged jointed cruck with chamfered arch braces and originally had single sets of curving windbraces, some of which still survive. There is a hip cruck in the upper end wall. The section over the inner room is clean, while that over the hall is smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. The rest of the roof was replaced in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Behind the house is the kitchen garden, enclosed by a late 18th and early 19th-century tall brick wall laid in monk bond.