Butterford

Butterford is a country house at North Huish, built around 1790 for Thomas or his brother Walter Palk, incorporating possible additions from circa 1810. It survives as a substantially reduced remnant of a larger structure, most of which was demolished in the 1930s.

The original house, built in 1788 on the site of a demolished earlier dwelling, was a three-storey building with a south-east facing front of 2:3:2 bays. The central section, comprising three bays, was slightly advanced and pedimented with rusticated quoins. The flanking two-bay ranges continued at the rear as service wings, returning at the back to enclose a courtyard with a carriageway passing through the right-hand range. Some rear ranges may have been added around 1810.

Today, the house comprises the original left-hand two bays and the associated wing behind it, linked to the surviving rear section of the right-hand service wing, which retains its carriageway passage.

The principal exterior elevation is now the south-west return of the original house, displaying two storeys with rendered stone walls, limestone rusticated quoins and plinth, and slate roofs with gabled ends and lead rolls to the ridge. The front presents a symmetrical four-window range interrupted by an off-centre Tuscan porch with heavy entablature and half-glazed door. The original window openings contain large 10–12-pane sash windows, though some have been replaced by 20th-century casements and several first-floor windows to the right are blind. The slate-hung service wing to the left, set slightly back, features moulded cast-iron guttering with lion-mask joints and lower eaves. Its windows comprise 12-pane sashes on the first floor and 2-light 8-pane sashes below, with some replacements. The rear of the main range is now slate hung; the service wing behind is whitewashed stone rubble. The north-east wing, largely detached, retains its segmentally arched carriageway, two storeys, and small openings with flat slate arches.

The interior of the main range contains a principal room with fragmentary moulded plaster cornice (much ceiling and wall plaster having been removed following dry rot); a Devonian marble chimneypiece with bolection moulding, likely from the late 19th century; and an adjacent room with a circa 1830 white marble chimneypiece and moulded ceiling cornice of the same period. Some late 18th-century panelled doors survive, as does a set of servants' bells in the passage.

The property has Saxon origins—Botiford is recorded in Domesday Book and was referred to as the dwelling of Philip Boterford during the reign of Edward I (according to Risdon's history of 1605–1630). It belonged to the May and Gibbs families until the time of Elizabeth I. In 1788, Richard Stade of Newnham sold the estate to Thomas Palk, who demolished the existing house and subsequently sold it to his brother Walter Palk of Morley; the brothers' respective roles in the circa 1790 reconstruction remain uncertain.