Brightley Barton

Brightley Barton is a house of late 15th-century origin with early 17th-century rebuilding, substantially altered in the 19th century and later. It stands on dressed and coursed unrendered stone rubble with a slate roof featuring crested ridge tiles, hipped at the left end and gabled to the right. Brick stacks occupy each gable end, with a lateral rear stone rubble stack enclosed by a 19th-century rear wing and an axial brick shaft backing onto the passage. A lateral stack to the left end was demolished when the 19th-century rear wing was added.

The house demonstrates a complex development history. Its original fabric—a porch, inner doorway, and possibly some stonework—dates to the late 15th century and was probably reused in late 16th or early 17th-century rebuilding. The original house stood on a moated site immediately to the west of the present structure. The plan comprises two rooms to the left of a through passage, a single large room to the right, with two adjoining gable-ended wings to the rear left and an added bay at the right end extending forward as a front wing, formerly a cider house and now part of the dwelling. The eaves have been heightened; the roof structure over the two left-hand rooms was replaced in the 18th century, while the four trusses of early 17th-century date over the right-hand rooms remain intact.

The left-hand room adjoining the passage is heated by the rear lateral stack, its fireplace originally containing a bread oven, suggesting it may have been the service end. The left-end room clearly extended into the outer rear gable-ended wing, heavily rebuilt when the adjoining rear wing was added; this latter wing contains a servants staircase. The large room to the right was apparently originally divided into two, with the axial stack heating the former left-hand room (fireplace now concealed) and the gable end stack serving the right-hand room.

The building is two storeys with a virtually symmetrical five-window range. The two outer windows on each floor are 19th-century three-light casements with three panes per light, except for the two ground floor left-hand windows which have cavetto stone mullions of three lights with cavetto moulded ashlar surrounds. Additionally, there is a 19th-century two-light casement, three panes per light, to the left and above the entrance porch. All upper floor windows have slightly cambered dressed stone lintels; ground floor right-hand windows have timber lintels. The entrance porch of stone rubble has a gabled slate roof with shaped bargeboards. Above the late 15th-century semi-circular stone arched doorway with ogee-hollow moulded surround and hoodmould with foliate label stops stands an ashlar heraldic crest of the Gifford family. The narrower inner door is similarly moulded, with an 18th-century semi-circular headed timber door featuring raised and fielded panels to the inner face and cover strips to the outer face forming twelve panels. Set back buttresses occupy the left end of the main range. The cider-house wing has a three-window range with 20th-century fenestration and pigeon holes to the front gable end.

Internally, joinery was entirely replaced in the 19th century. The left-hand room has a roughly dressed stone arch instead of the more usual timber lintel to the fireplace. The room to the right has a partially panelled ceiling with intersecting ceiling beams forming four fields; the beams carry moulded plaster decoration with a central Tudor rose to the soffit at the intersection and three paterae to the soffit of each beam. These intersecting ceiling beams with moulded plasterwork decoration are confined to this former left-hand room.

The roof structure comprises five probably 18th-century pegged trusses with straight principals and staggered butt purlins over the main range to the left of the axial stack. Four late 16th or early 17th-century trusses span the right-hand side of the main range, closely spaced at approximately 2.5 metres apart, with heavy principals whose feet are cut away. They carry two tiers of threaded purlins and a ridge purlin, with morticed and tenoned cambered collars. Mortices to the upper sides indicate that chamber ceilings have been considerably lowered. The cider house retains massive 18th-century cider presses with wooden screw; inscribed on the press is "Brightly Barton was repainted 1895, Greenslade and Westacott".