Langham House Including Gateway Adjoining On North

Langham House, including Gateway Adjoining on North

Parish school and integral school master's house, now converted into one dwelling. Built in the mid-19th century, most likely 1847 according to White's Directory of 1850, which records it as "a neat building in Elizabethan style erected 1847 by Richard Durant of Sharpham House". (Kelly's Directory of 1902 later claimed it was built from materials salvaged when the church house was demolished in 1865, but the stylistic evidence and White's contemporary reference to the church house still standing in 1850 make the earlier date more credible.)

The building is constructed of dressed shale rubble with local limestone quoins and chamfered high plinth, with Bath stone window dressings. It has a steeply pitched slate roof with gabled ends decorated with ornate wooden bargeboards; the right-hand gable's finial has been replaced. The left-hand gable end has a projecting stack rising through it with a weathered cap. A rendered lateral stack with set-offs stands at the rear. Two small metal ventilators sit on the ridge; only the right-hand one retains its conical cap.

The original plan comprised a four-bay open-hall school room heated by a rear lateral stack and accessed through a large front porch, with a fifth bay at the left-hand end housing the schoolmaster's accommodation—a two-storey structure with its own gable-end stack. A basement extends below the left-hand end where ground level is significantly lower. The schoolmaster's quarters have since been integrated into the main hall by removing the original partition and floor, though another partition has been inserted to divide the hall into two bays at the left end and three at the right.

The exterior presents an asymmetrical four-window range of two and three-light windows with two-centred headed lights and diamond-shaped leaded panes. A large projecting gabled porch, featuring ornate bargeboards with finial and pendant, projects right of centre; it has a lancet window on its front and a chamfered four-centred arch doorway on the right side fitted with a 19th-century plank door. The left side of the porch has a small quatrefoil window. At the lower left-hand end, basement window openings with chamfered surrounds are visible, with a two-light window above and a gabled dormer with ornate bargeboards and casement containing leaded panes. The north gable end displays a stone two-light four-centred arch window with Y-tracery and leaded panes. The rear elevation shows a lateral stack left of centre and three large segmented-headed window openings; the rightmost contains a 12-pane sash while the others are 20th-century casements. A flat-roofed single-storey 20th-century addition sits below, likely built over the former playground. Adjoining the right (north) end is a short section of wall with a doorway giving access to the playground; this doorway has a chamfered four-centred arch and boarded door.

The interior displays a five-bay roof with chamfered principal rafters featuring curved feet that form Tudor-shaped arches resembling raised cruck trusses, mounted on moulded corbels. The left-hand bay was originally separated by partition and floored to form the two-storey schoolmaster's house; this partition and floor have been removed, and another wooden partition now divides the two left-hand bays.

A late 20th-century single-storey flat-roofed addition has been constructed at the rear, probably over the playground.