St John's Vicarage

St John's Vicarage

This vicarage was built circa 1851 for the Reverend Charles Leslie Courtenay, designed according to plans by Charles Fowler.

The house is constructed of squared rubble-stone with granite dressings and corbels to the eaves. The pitched roofs are slated, with painted wooden bargeboards. The staged ashlar chimney stacks are topped with slate. Most of the original windows retain their sash and casement frames, though some have been replaced. The granite sills are runneled to throw off water.

The building stands on a west-to-east axis with a broadly rectangular though irregular footprint, composed of several separately-roofed ranges. Two parallel ranges run west to east with a flat-roofed section between them. A third range runs west to east to the west, and a central range runs through the centre, projecting to the north. The original single-storey service wing extending northwards has been largely demolished, and late twentieth-century garages now occupy this area.

The house is built over two storeys. The west-facing entrance elevation features a projecting gabled stone porch containing a timber door with three panels below and glazing above, lit by a window to the north. To the left is a gabled single bay with replaced windows. Further left, the central range is set back with a subsidiary six-panel door giving access to the kitchen, topped by a twisted iron knocker. To the right of the porch stands a taller block forming the south-west corner, with a broad external stack with offsets separating two narrow windows. On the south-facing garden front, this block has an opening with glazed doors and a window to the left under a broad relieving arch, with another window above. The centre of this elevation has a canted bay window under a slated hood, with a window in a gable above. To the right is a double-height canted bay window, apparently a later addition. The east elevation has an external stack at its centre with a narrow window on either side at ground-floor level. To the right, the northern range is set back; in the corner is a door opening to the north with chamfered panels below and glazing above. Further right is the north projection of the central block with a single window to each storey. The north face of this block has a central external stack, with twentieth-century garages attached to its lower part extending northwards.

Internally, the porch opens into a lobby with a window to the left and a bench set into a niche to the right, leading through a second pointed-arched door into the house. The square hall contains an alcove to the left. Ahead lies the stair hall, where a dog-leg stair rises from the east, lit by a glazed panel in the flat roof. The balustrade has straight balusters and chamfered newel posts with pyramidal finals and matching pendentives. A second section rises eastwards from the half-pace landing. Opening from the hall is a large room, probably originally the dining room, lit by panelled French doors, with a stone chimneypiece featuring a Tudor-arched opening and complex moulded brackets to the mantelshelf, and encaustic tiles to the hearth. To the east are two arched recesses, one containing a door to the drawing room. The drawing room, lit by the bay window, has a smaller chimneypiece with a moulded segmental-arched opening and original grate. The eastern section of the house, accessed through an opening at the east end of the stairs hall, forms a discrete area with a lobby entered through the eastern or back door, allowing the vicar to receive visitors separately from the family house. In the south-west corner is the study, reached through a pointed doorway, with a timber chimneypiece in eighteenth-century style featuring a bolection-moulded surround and concave frieze, and a small recessed bookcase. To the north is a lavatory. In the northern part of the central range lies the kitchen, accessed from the external door in the north-west corner, internally, and by a back stair to the eastern landing. The kitchen has a firesurround of moulded brick.

On the first floor, at the east end is a private chapel with a scissor-beam roof and a small window facing east, otherwise unadorned. Overlooking the garden in the south-east corner, with the canted bay window, is a bedroom with a small cast-iron chimneypiece and an adjacent dressing room. The bedroom at the centre of the south elevation also has a cast-iron chimneypiece. The bedroom in the south-west corner, with windows on two aspects, has a stone chimneypiece with chamfered jambs and its original grate. A door to the north of the western landing gives access to the back stair with former maids' rooms to either side. Throughout, the house retains its original joinery, including chamfered doorframes and doors with chamfered panels.

The rubble wall with granite capping to the west, separating the house from the road, contains a pointed opening with a boarded timber gate. A lower section of wall to the north has gate piers banded with brick and granite with pyramidal tops, possibly added when St John's Cottages were built. The wall is similar to that enclosing the churchyard opposite.