Old House, Including Outbuilding At North-West End

The Old House, along with its associated outbuilding, is a house dating from the 17th century or earlier, and significantly altered in the 20th century with the addition of a 20th-century wing. The house is constructed of rendered rubble with a gable-ended asbestos slate roof. There are two rendered rubble stacks: one to the left gable end and a large, projecting lateral stack at the front. Originally, the house followed a three-room and through-passage plan, with the lower room likely located to the left. The hall was heated by the front lateral stack, and the right gable end stack likely heated the lower room, although the position of the original passage is unclear. A 20th-century one-room wing was added at the rear of the right-hand end, and a 19th/20th-century rear outshut sits behind the left-hand end.

The front facade is asymmetrical, presenting a four-window arrangement. The ground and first-floor windows on the left-hand side are late 20th-century 3- and 2-light casements with “leaded” panes. Other windows are 2- and 3-light, irregularly spaced 20th-century casements with small panes. A 17th-century 2-light wood mullion window, chamfered on the inside with leaded panes in poor condition and iron stanchion bars, is located on the ground floor to the left of centre, with a projecting stack to its right.

Internally, the house has been much altered but retains several chamfered cross beams with indistinct stops. The fireplace associated with the lateral stack has had its lintel replaced, while the gable-end fireplace has a chamfered wood lintel with ogee stops. The roof space has not been inspected.

The outbuilding, located at the north-west end, probably dates from the 17th or early 18th century and is built of local limestone rubble with a corrugated iron roof and gabled ends. It features a large limestone rubble lateral stack on the front and a projecting right-hand gable end stack. It has a rectangular, single-depth plan, likely originally comprising two rooms, the left-hand (south-east) room heated from a front lateral stack and the right-hand room (north-west) with a gable end stack. A two-storey projection is situated on the front wall of the right-hand side of the outbuilding, its purpose currently unknown. The interior is now one large room, open to late 19th-century softwood roof trusses. The front lateral stack has a cambered arched first-floor fireplace and a ground-floor fireplace with a missing lintel or fallen arch. The right-hand gable end fireplace also has cambered arches. Local tradition suggests the building was once part of a row of almhouses, with two located in the Old House and the other two in the adjoining outbuilding. It’s believed Old House was originally a church house, later extended and used as almhouses, with the outbuilding acting as the extension.