Leyhill

LEYHILL - Farmhouse, the remains of a country mansion

Leyhill is a farmhouse that represents the surviving fragment of a much larger country mansion. The house has a complex building history spanning nearly two centuries. The oldest part is dated 1657, the house was substantially enlarged, rearranged and refurbished in the early 18th century, and a further modernisation dated 1836 probably marks when the building was reduced to its present size. The construction materials include plastered local stone rubble, with the early 18th-century phase incorporating French bond brick including burnt headers and limestone ashlar dressings. The chimneyshafts are stone rubble with early 18th or 19th-century brick tops, and the roof is slate.

Plan and Development

The house is basically L-shaped in plan. The main block faces south-south-east. It has a three-room layout with a central lobby containing a large open well staircase. To the right (east) of the lobby is the principal parlour, heated by a rear lateral stack. To the left of the stair lobby is the dining room with an end stack. A single-room rear block projects at right angles behind the dining room. This is an unheated service room, with a narrow service stair between it and the dining room. A single-storey kitchen projects from the left (west) end, with a fireplace in the front wall sharing the same stack as the dining room.

As it stands, the house poses problems of interpretation, though the dating of different parts is reasonably clear. The single-storey kitchen block is early 19th century, probably associated with the 1836 date plaque on the chimneyshaft. The former kitchen is the present dining room, which together with the service room behind clearly forms part of the 1657 build. The rest of the main block—the stair lobby and parlour—was rebuilt in the early 18th century.

The layout of rooms raises questions. The house is clearly built to a high standard, yet the outside doorways are very modest: one enters the 19th-century kitchen, and the front doorway opens into the dining room/former kitchen. Furthermore, the early 18th-century show front is confined to only part of the facade. A narrow lobby at the left (west) end, alongside the parlour, proves that the house once extended further in that direction. Perhaps wings projected forward from each end of the show front, or perhaps the show front extended further westwards with a grand entrance there. Only archaeology could answer these questions.

Even within the present house there are puzzles. For instance, there is a large room over the dining room/former kitchen which may originally have extended to the back of the rear block. Its high status is indicated by remains of 17th-century ornamental plasterwork frieze, yet the room is unheated. Was it a gallery of some kind? There is also a large buttress propping the end wall of the rear block which serves no structural purpose since the wall leans inwards—is it therefore an architectural feature?

Apart from the single-storey 19th-century kitchen, the house is two storeys with largely disused attics in the roofspace. There is a cellar below the stair lobby and parlour.

Exterior

The front has an irregular arrangement with one window to the left and three windows to the right. The three-window section is early 18th century and displays high-quality polite architecture in exposed brick. The first floor windows are original pine 24-pane sashes with thick glazing bars (the centre one is blind), and the ground floor windows are similar 28-pane sashes. All have limestone ashlar bolection-moulded architraves with keystones. Below the windows, the sides of the architraves are carried down as flat pilasters—those on the first floor descending to a flat platband at first floor level, and those on the ground floor down to a plinth, creating an apron-like effect. The cellar windows below the plinth are two-light windows with ovolo-moulded mullions.

The narrow strip of front wall to the right of this section and the rest of the front wall to the left is plastered. Immediately to the left is the front doorway containing a 19th-century part-glazed nine-panel door behind a contemporary gabled porch. To the left is a tripartite window with 19th-century 18-pane sashes, and above that a 20th-century casement with glazing bars. The roof is hipped at both ends. The kitchen stack chimneyshaft includes a limestone plaque inscribed "W.R.D. 1836".

The left (west) side is partly covered by the 19th-century lean-to kitchen. There are three first floor windows: two are 20th-century casements but the left one is a 17th-century limestone two-light window with ovolo-moulded mullion and hoodmould.

The rear end of the rear block has a two-window front with 17th-century limestone three-light windows with ovolo-moulded mullions and hoodmoulds (most lights contain rectangular panes of leaded glass). Here there is a limestone plaque in the centre under the eaves with an inscription in a lozenge-shaped frame recording that the house was "new builded" on 19th February 1657 and including the initials of John and Mary Willoughby. Directly below is the curious buttress, which appears to be secondary (probably early 18th century). The lower stage is volcanic stone, the upper stage is brick; it is large and has weathered offsets.

The windows to the rear of the main block light the staircase (except for the top one which lights an attic room). The lowest one lights a compartment under the stairs and has a 20th-century casement with glazing bars. The rest are early 18th-century timber three-light casements with flat-faced mullions containing rectangular panes of leaded glass and iron-framed casements.

Interior

Although the present house is only part of the 17th and early 18th-century mansion, it is remarkably well-preserved. The dining room/former kitchen and back block date from 1657; the stairhall and parlour section is wholly early 18th century.

The 17th-century section has a series of heavy crossbeams on both floors (those in the dining room/former kitchen and room above are axial in relation to the main block). They are all lightly plastered and appear to be roughly chamfered with run-out stops, as if intended to be clad in moulded plaster. The dining room/former kitchen has a large fireplace with limestone ashlar jambs and seats on each side. The oak lintel may be a replacement; it is plastered over. The unheated room above is partitioned off from the stair landing, and this partition includes a frieze of 1657 ornamental plasterwork comprising a series of shields in scrolled cartouches. There is no evidence that the first floor partitions are earlier than the 19th century. Some of the stone mullioned windows at the back include old, if not original, boarded shutters.

The first floor beams carry the attic floor and also act as tie beams to the 17th-century roof trusses, which have pegged dovetail-shaped lap-jointed collars (all further strengthened by secondary 19th-century spiked lap-jointed collars).

In the early 18th-century section, none of the structural carpentry is exposed below roof level. The beams over the stairhall and parlour are cased in early 18th-century moulded plaster. The parlour has a six-panel ceiling with small moulded plaster rosettes at the intersections of the beams. The narrow lobby to the east of the parlour provides evidence that there was once another high-status room there—the short lengths of beams are also encased in moulded plasterwork, and the rear wall shows the springing of a tall brick round-headed arch.

The parlour is lined with bolection-moulded panelling in two heights. The panels are fielded above and below a moulded dado. The fielded panel doors and window shutters are contemporary. The fireplace is also original, in purple-coloured marble with moulded imposts and rounded corners to the lintel. The chamber above has a similar limestone fireplace with moulded architrave and keystone.

The open well stair has an open string with carved scroll-shaped stair brackets, moulded newel posts, slender turned balusters and flat moulded handrail. The wall round the stair has fielded panel wainscotting. The top landing, however, dates from 1657. It is an arcade of large turned posts with a balustrade between. Here the turned balusters are heavier than those of the main stair and have a different design, and the handrail has a modillion cornice. The main stair might be a remodelling of the 1657 stair since it does include one 1657-style baluster near the top.

Most of the doorways in the early 18th-century section are original with fielded panels. An early 18th-century fielded panel door leads from the dining room/former kitchen to the cellar. Above it is a kind of fanlight with glazing bars borrowing light from the stairhall to light the dining room/former kitchen. The cellar has a brick and flag floor and a brick vault.

The early 18th-century roof is an interesting structure of tie beam trusses. The collars are high and morticed-and-tenoned to the principals. The principals do not extend above collar level—it appears that the apexes of the trusses have been cut off, but this was how they were built. The flat top section was probably designed to keep the early 18th-century roof the same height as the 1657 roof. The trusses have carpenter's assembly marks. The roof structure is complete with its common rafters, but there are gaps in the front and a square-set lower purlin which suggests that there were once dormer windows to the front.

Historical Context

Leyhill is an interesting and very well-preserved fragment of a country mansion. Early descriptions report a chapel here, but no evidence remains of it. The walled garden to the west of the house mentioned in the former list description has now been demolished, and ploughing has destroyed evidence of the "bowling green".

Leyhill, alias La Hill, is recorded as a manor in the time of Henry III. The Willoughby family are recorded as living in the parish in the 1630s. In 1655, Mary Willoughby, the sole heir of the Willoughby estate, married George Trevelyan of Nettlecombe. According to the date plaque, her father John Willoughby built or enlarged Leyhill on a lavish scale in 1657. His daughter had married well—George Trevelyan became a baronet in 1661 and died in 1671. A marriage settlement between another George Trevelyan and a Julia Claverly dated 1731 describes "that capitall Mansion house, Barton farm and Demesne of or called Leahill"; this was probably after the early 18th-century rebuild. The house is apparently well-documented with a great deal of unsorted material in the Somerset Record Office.