The Old Palace And Attached Wall

The Old Palace and attached wall are a house, now divided into two dwellings. The main structure dates largely from the 18th century and early 19th century, although there may be earlier origins. The walls are constructed of Flemish bond brick, with two distinct periods of brickwork—the earlier brickwork includes burnt headers—and painted local volcanic trap rubble to the rear. The roof is slate, with brick chimney shafts. The layout is of a double-depth main range, three rooms wide, with a rear wing projecting at a right angle to the right. The earlier rear range was originally used as service buildings and later incorporated into a house built in two phases: an early 18th-century phase in the centre, extended or rebuilt around the early 19th century at both ends.

The two-storey front has an asymmetrical facade of eight bays, divided between the two properties with a 6:2 bay arrangement. The roof has deep coved eaves, hipped on the right end and gabled on the left. The western section, The Old Palace, has an 19th-century four-panel door with an overlight, set within a shallow, gabled trellis porch and a gauged brick flat arch. The two ground floor windows to the left and the right hand window have segmental brick arches and are fitted with 16-pane 19th-century sash windows. A blocked first-floor window is visible in the fourth bay from the left, while the three windows to the left of the first floor are similar sashes with flat arches. The left-hand property’s early 18th-century flush frame 12-pane sash windows, featuring thick glazing bars and gauged brick arches on the ground floor, are noteworthy. The right-hand property has a 19th-century panelled door, a porch matching The Old Palace, and a blocked first-floor window above. A 16-pane early 19th-century sash window is found in the right-hand bay. The rear elevation has a lower roofline and features timber sash and casement windows with glazing bars.

The ground floor of The Old Palace was inspected and retains early 19th-century features, including panelled doors and a marble chimney-piece. The stone rubble rear wall of the main block reveals the stub of a right-angled wall, which may have been part of the Bishop's Palace shown in a copy of a map associated with a mid-16th-century terrier.