Chelveshayes

Chelveshayes is a house of late 17th-century origin that underwent extensive mid-19th-century refurbishment, followed by late 19th-century alterations and renovation in 1985. It faces south towards the churchyard.

The structure comprises plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with extensive patching using various bricks on the rear elevation. Brick stacks support tall plastered brick chimneyshafts topped with 19th-century octagonal chimneypots. The roof is covered in purple slate with bands of scalloped grey slate and crested ridge tiles.

The house follows a 4-room plan facing south. The left (west) end contains the principal parlour with a gable-end stack, followed by the entrance hall housing the main stair and formerly heated by an axial stack backing onto the parlour. Right of centre sits the dining room with an axial stack, adjacent to the second parlour or study at the right (east) end, which has a gable-end stack. A kitchen with an end stack occupies the 2-storey outshots across the rear. Although the main house retains a 17th-century shell, the 19th-century alterations were so extensive that the original 17th-century layout cannot be determined. The section behind the entrance hall was rebuilt in the late 19th century.

The building is two storeys with a distinctive and idiosyncratic front elevation in Tudor Gothic style. The front is irregular with 4 windows. All first-floor windows and the right end ground floor window are late 17th-century oak-framed 3-light windows with flat-faced mullions and shallow internal mouldings. In the 19th century, external ovolo mouldings were applied and most contain mid-19th-century leaded glass with patterned and coloured margin panes. These windows feature mid-19th-century moulded stucco eared architraves with acanthus brackets beneath the sills. Right of centre is a small 20th-century casement; the other two ground floor windows are 19th-century. One is a 16-pane sash with a moulded stucco eared architrave. At the left end, the principal parlour has a tripartite sash with a central 12-pane sash; its eared architrave contains a foliate motif apparently using the same mould as an internal ceiling rose, with the moulding derived from internal cornice mouldings.

The front doorway is left of centre, containing a mid-to-late 19th-century 6-panel door with panelled reveals behind a porch detailed in Gothic style. The eaves are carried on brackets carved as acanthus leaves. The roof is gable-ended; the left gable contains a 12-pane sash lighting the first-floor chamber. Each end has bargeboards carved with blind fret design, and openwork bargeboards extend down the right end over the outshots. The rear elevation includes late 17th-century casements without the stucco architraves. A late 19th-century gabled bay projects from the rear of the entrance hall, its first floor hung with red tiles and containing a single-hung sash dropping into the wall thickness, with an elliptical head and glazing bars defining margin panes and Tudor arch-headed lights.

The interior is essentially 19th-century and was carefully restored circa 1985 with plaster cornices hand-run in situ. The stick baluster stair in the entrance hall has been renovated. Alongside the dining room side of the entrance hall stands a late 17th-century plank-and-muntin screen with elm muntins given shallow mouldings and pine planks. The kitchen contains a late 17th-century brick fireplace with a replacement timber lintel, a stone oven doorway, and the right cheek retains a fragment of late 17th-century plaster rendering incised with a sgraffito pattern of rusticated ashlar. The kitchen crossbeams, likely late 17th-century, are chamfered with scroll stops but very slender. The central section of the main block is carried on late 17th-century A-frame trusses. The remainder of the house is 19th-century and includes good detail, particularly ornamental plasterwork, the finest of which appears in the chamber over the parlour.

This is a very interesting and idiosyncratic house. According to the owner, it served as the local doctor's house throughout the 19th century.