The Vicarage

The Vicarage is a vicarage house built in 1835 to designs by the local architect William Burgess. It is constructed of plastered random rubble sandstone with gable-ended slate roofs. The house is arranged as a double-depth plan with a central hall, principal rooms on either side of the entrance, and stairs leading off the hall to the right and up to a first-floor central landing, which serves the main bedrooms, each with adjoining dressing rooms. A rear service wing has been demolished. The building is heated by lateral, rear, and axial chimney stacks with brick shafts, serving ground and first-floor rooms.

The front elevation is symmetrical, with three bays, the central bay projecting as a two-story porch, narrower than the flanking bays. The first floor has two-light casement windows with transoms, four panes per light with margin panes, all under timber hood moulds. The ground floor has French windows in the side bays and details consistent with the first floor. A central doorway features a depressed ogee arch, also with a wooden hoodmould, and a double, half-glazed door with an overlight. The porch has a plaster ribbed vault with the date 1835 and is lit by small lancet windows. The left-hand (garden) elevation is symmetrical, with separately gabled outer bays, each featuring a quatrefoil in the gable wall, two-light casement windows to the first floor, and French windows to the ground floor, all with details matching the other windows. The rear elevation is plain and has been altered, featuring a shallow central turret that appears to be a later addition. The right-hand elevation is asymmetrical and includes 12-pane hornless sash windows and a tall two-centred-pointed window to the stairs, also with a 12-pane hornless sash and intersecting glazing bars in the head.

The interior retains contemporary fittings, including a dog-leg curved stair with stick balusters, plaster cornices to the main rooms, and timber and polished limestone chimneypieces. Uffculme Vicarage is a well-preserved house of its date, largely intact both internally and externally and is considered to be among the least altered of Burgess’s domestic works.