Brooking House

Brooking House is a parsonage built around 1885 for the Church of St Barnabas, now converted into two private properties. The architect is unknown, though it was probably the same person who designed the church. The building is constructed of local stone rubble, probably limestone, and is harled (roughcast). The roof is covered with scantle slate and features gabled ends and low crested ridge tiles of the type used in the 17th century, with some gables slate hung. The stacks are rendered and axial, gable end and lateral.

The plan is roughly L-shaped. A large two-storey entrance porch projects from the front to the right of which is the service wing. Attached to the front right are small outhouses including a larder, wash-house and pump-house arranged around a small yard. To the left of the porch is a wing containing the principal room, probably the drawing room, overlooking the garden. The entrance hall leads from the porch to the rear wing, which has a corridor on its right side, a stairwell and small room (possibly the study) on the left, and a library at the far end. The building displays asymmetrical elevations in an Arts and Crafts vernacular revival style.

The north entrance front has a large projecting gabled porch to the left of centre with a rounded arch doorway off centre to the left and a large raking buttress to the right of the doorway. Above the doorway is a three-light casement with glazing bars and dripstone, and above that a ventilation slit. The angle to the right of the porch is splayed with a segmental arch blind doorway. The service wing to the right has one- and two-light casements with glazing bars and two gables with decoratively shaped slate hanging, though the right-hand gable has been partly rehung with asbestos slates. Projecting from the service wing is a single-storey structure with a ventilation slit in the gable end and a louvred ventilator on the ridge. The larder and wash-house are linked by a stone wall with a segmental arch doorway and rendered battlements, screening a small yard. Within the yard the service wing has a large three-light kitchen window with glazing bars and a doorway through the larder. On the gable end of the service wing is an outshut with ventilation slits. To the left of the main entrance porch is a projecting lateral stack with set-offs.

The east garden front features a projecting gable end with a ground floor four-light mullion transom casement and a first floor three-light casement with glazing bars. To the left of the gable is a small four-centred arch stair window. To the left of centre is a projecting bay with a jettied slate-hung first floor gable on large shaped timber brackets supporting a moulded plate and exposed joist ends. The rear south gable end has a square ground floor bay window with a slated hipped roof. The inner west face of the rear wing has two gables with asbestos slate-hanging, a swept raking buttress with weathering and a small single-light four-centred arch window. The rear of the service wing has a three-light band of windows under the eaves above the back doorway with a depressed two-centred arch. A 20th-century conservatory extends across the ground storey of the back of the service wing.

Interior features include benches in the porch with double cyma moulded ceiling beams with run-out stops and an ovolo-moulded three-centred arch wooden doorframe. The dog-leg staircase has a moulded string, heavy turned balusters, chamfered newels and a moulded handrail. The wooden chimneypiece in the former study has a guilloche frieze and a moulded cornice shelf supported on recessed console brackets, with a cast-iron fire grate decorated with roundels, flowers, butterflies and whorls. The library has a moulded plaster ceiling of geometric design and a wooden chimneypiece with a bracketed metal shelf. The drawing room has a fireplace with moulded stone jambs, a brick segmental arch with a keystone supporting the mantel shelf, and a ceiling with moulded ribs in a grid pattern. Most original internal joinery survives, including well-designed panelled doors with scratch moulded stiles and rails. The hall has a patterned tile floor. Some smaller and simpler chimneypieces survive on the first floor.