Ashwell Including Garden Area Wall And Mounting Block Adjoining South

Ashwell is a farmhouse, now a private house, probably dating from the late 16th or early 17th century and substantially remodelled and extended in around the early 19th century. It is built of slate rubble with slate hanging above the first-floor window lintel level. The roof is covered with scantle slate and has gabled ends, with early crested ridge tiles over the rear wing.

The building features three projecting and axial stacks. A projecting slate-hung stack with set-offs stands at the left-hand end; an axial stack to the right of centre has a slate rubble shaft heightened in brick; and a very large slate rubble stack occupies the gable end of the wing.

Originally, the house followed a three-room and passage plan facing south. The hall was heated from an axial stack backing onto the passage, and the inner room to the left was heated from a gable-end stack. The lower end to the right has been demolished and the passage widened to form an unheated room with a cheese room above. This alteration was probably part of the early 19th-century remodelling, which also included raising the roof to create a full two storeys and adding a wide single-room-plan kitchen wing with a gable-end stack at the back of the hall. The back of the inner room was partitioned to form a pantry with access from the kitchen, overlapping into the inner room. The main staircase is a straight flight behind and against the rear wall of the former hall, rising from a short passage between the hall and kitchen, and dates from the early 19th-century works. A second staircase, also against the back wall of the former hall, rises from the kitchen to a servants' chamber over the kitchen, which has no first-floor access to the main range.

An unusual feature is the late 16th or early 17th-century roof truss over the inner room, which is situated laterally to the main range. This suggests either that the original house was orientated on a north-south axis or that the left end of the house had a cross-wing or rear wing.

The exterior presents two storeys with a regular but asymmetrical three-window range. All windows are early 19th-century casements with glazing bars: three lights on the first floor and ground floor left, four lights to the ground floor centre, and a small single-light window just above the first floor at the right-hand end. The right-hand end of the ground floor is recessed to form a porch with a slate rubble side wall, and the right-hand corner is open, with the first floor above supported on a circular slate rubble pier. A wide flight of slate steps leads up to the doorway, which has a 20th-century glazed door.

The rear elevation features a wide gable-ended wing to the right with a large gable-end stack. In the angle to the left, along the left-hand side of the wing and across the back of the main range, stands a circa early 19th-century pentice roof over the ground floor with scantle slates. On the first floor of the main range is an early 19th-century two-light window with leaded panes; its lintel bears painted lettering reading "Cheese Room". Other rear windows are early 19th-century casements with glazing bars, and the doors are also early 19th-century with flush panels.

Set back at the right-hand end of the house is a former barn, now rebuilt as a separate dwelling, constructed of rendered stone with a slate roof.

The interior contains a hall with a large axial fireplace featuring an unchamfered timber lintel (possibly originally chamfered) with chamfered slate jambs and a day oven retaining its original clay floor with two jug-like handles. Various 18th and early 19th-century panelled doors survive, some with fielded panels. Early 19th-century panelled window shutters are present. The inner room has a late 19th-century single wooden chimney piece and grate. All ground-floor room ceilings are plastered. The kitchen fireplace is blocked but retains a large 19th-century moulded wooden architrave. The first floor features many fielded two-panel doors, one with an original drop handle, a hanging cupboard with fielded six-panel double doors and drawers below, and a chimneypiece with a moulded shelf. The servants' room over the rear wing has a small moulded wooden chimneypiece.

The roof construction shows collars lapped and pegged to the faces of the principals, which are halved and pegged at the apexes. One earlier truss at the left-hand end of the main range, situated laterally, features principals with a morticed ridge and collar and mortices for threaded purlins, with no ridge-piece, and is clean in construction.

The listing includes a garden area wall to the south front, a low slate rubble wall with quartz rubble capping, and a mounting block by the gateway on the south side.