The Old Rectory Including Front Garden Walls

The Old Rectory, including front garden walls, Sampford Peverell Higher Town

This is a house, former rectory and school, originally a medieval priest's house. It dates from the early 16th century—a datestone claims 1500—and was restored in 1851 with alterations around 1900. The original walling is coursed red sandstone ashlar, though there is extensive rubble patching; the 19th-century extension is brick. The building has red sandstone ashlar stacks and chimneyshafts, and a slate roof, though it may originally have been thatched.

The house is set back from the street and built to an L-plan facing west-south-west. The main block contains a 2-room-and-through-passage plan. At the south end is a small unheated service room now used as a kitchen. To the left is the hall with a large projecting front lateral stack. At the north end, a parlour crosswing projects forward and has its own outer projecting lateral stack. The rear of the passage is now blocked by the circa 1900 stairblock, with contemporary service rooms to the rear of the main block.

The original layout has been substantially altered and obscured since the 19th century, leaving questions about its interpretation. The house raises several puzzles. While one might expect a house of circa 1500 to be open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire, there is no definite evidence for this. The hall roof dates from circa 1900 and the parlour block roof is inaccessible. If first-floor structures and fireplaces were inserted, this likely occurred in the early or mid 16th century. A contemporary record suggests there was a small ante-room on each floor of the parlour wing, with a blocked doorway at the east end that originally led to a projecting newel stair turret. A photograph from circa 1900 in the owners' possession shows the main range as a single storey block, lower than it is now, although the hall chimneystack appears much as it is today. This raises the possibility that the 1851 renovation removed an upper floor which was then replaced circa 1900. The house is also somewhat incomplete: the cutting of the Grand Western Canal in the early 19th century led to the demolition of the service buildings, and the present Rectory was subsequently built by the Canal Company in compensation.

The house is two storeys. The exterior displays an irregular 1:3-window front of circa 1900 timber casements with glazing bars and Tudor arch-headed lights with carved spandrels. All have stone ashlar flat arches over them; those on the front of the parlour wing have 19th-century Beerstone hoodmoulds, with the lower ones including late medieval Beerstone label stops carved as human heads. The large ground-floor window contains diamond panes of leaded glass. A Tudor arch doorway on the inner side of the main block appears to be a circa 1900 replacement of an earlier window. Above it is a tiny original Beerstone lancet window. The main doorway, right of centre in the main block, is an original Beerstone Tudor arch with moulded surround and contains a 20th-century door. Directly above is a 19th-century Hamstone plaque bearing a crown in high relief, inscribed "Margaret Richmond Derby. House and School of St John the Baptist. Erected 1500. Restored 1850. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." A Sun Insurance plaque is fixed to the main block wall above the left window. Both blocks are gable-ended.

The interior contains high-quality original or 16th-century detail. The hall has a magnificent high ceiling with 16 panels of richly-moulded intersecting beams. The moulded joists have been reset, with 2 in each panel where there were originally 3. Beneath the end beam against the passage is a moulded oak cornice, and much of the original oak screen may survive below. The parlour has an 8-panel ceiling of moulded intersecting beams, each panel further subdivided into 4 lesser panels. The eastern 2 main panels are slightly different, suggesting this may have been an ante-room, with a crosswall directly above. The main block roof is circa 1900. The parlour wing roof is a 7-bay ceiled wagon roof with moulded ribs and purlins, with a short section of the original crenellated wall plate surviving. Both fireplaces are blocked, and the joinery detail is consistently 19th-century.

The stone rubble front garden wall is mid 19th-century and once contained a tall gateway with a Hamstone plaque over it. This gateway has been demolished, but the plaque has been reset at the right end in what is now a garage wall. It bears the arms of Margaret Richmond Derby in high relief. Margaret Richmond Derby was Mary Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, who later married Lord Derby and died in 1509. She owned the manor and added the south aisle to the nearby Church of St John the Baptist.