Yatton Court Including Adjoining Service Range

Yatton Court is a rectory, now a house, built in 1855. It is constructed of dressed sandstone with tooled ashlar dressings and has gable-ended Welsh-slate roofs with a 2-span arrangement to the front and stepped down over the rear wing. Stone axial and end stacks rise from the building.

The building follows a double-depth plan, facing south-east, and is designed in the Tudor Gothic style. The front range contains three rooms with principal rooms facing the garden and a slightly projecting centre room. The entrance is positioned on the left side into the rear range, which houses the entrance hall and staircase hall to the centre, featuring an imperial staircase. A service range projects at right angles to the rear of the right-hand end, with two axial stacks and a wing returning at right angles to the left to form a service court. The main structure is one storey with an attic, while part of the service range is single-storey only.

Exterior features include a chamfered plinth and parapeted gables with chamfered kneelers and copings. The rectangular stone stacks are topped by clusters of octagonal shafts with moulded bases and caps; the left-hand end stack features chamfered offsets. A gabled stone bellcote sits on the rear ridge with a string course and an axial chamfered Tudor-arched opening that retains its bell.

The symmetrical 3-window garden front to the south-east shows a central full-height gabled shallow projection flanked by gabled full dormers. Ground-floor windows are 3-light cavetto-moulded mullioned and transomed stone windows with small-paned metal glazing, chamfered reveals and returned hoodmoulds. Two- and 3-light mullioned stone attic windows feature returned hoodmoulds, with 20th-century glazing in the central and left-hand windows.

The main entrance occupies the left-hand gable end of the rear range, with a continuously-chamfered archway with run-out stops and a mid-19th-century ribbed boarded door. A stone porch with chamfered plinth (returning to ground each side of the entrance) has a parapeted gable with chamfered curved kneelers and coping. The entrance itself features a continuously-moulded archway and hoodmould with square stops, probably intended to be carved. The porch interior has diamond-set stone tiles, chamfered Tudor-arched blind recesses in the side walls with run-out stops and stone cills, and a wooden waggon roof with billet ornament to the wall plate, pairs of purlins, a ridge-piece and carved square fleurons.

A first-floor 2-light mullioned stone window to the right has a hoodmould. The rear elevation shows a first-floor stone cross window to the right and a central large cross window with margin lights, which illuminates the staircase hall. An arched doorway to the left has a half-glazed door. The rear service wing features mullioned stone windows to the garden side and a chamfered Tudor-arched garden doorway with a mid-19th-century ribbed door and returned hoodmould. The return wing has a tall chamfered and moulded lancet with leaded margin-light glazing in its gable end.

The interior, not fully inspected, appears to retain its 1855 fixtures and fittings. Ground-floor rooms feature moulded plaster cornices and Gothic-panelled doors with architraves. The entrance hall has a plaster ceiling rose and decorative wrought-iron strap hinges to the rear of the main doorway. The central ground-floor room has a carved stone Gothic fireplace. The wooden imperial staircase features balusters and swept grip handrails, wreathed at the feet. The central flight is boxed in and the side flights have plastered soffits, supported on chamfered wooden posts.

This is a good example of a mid-19th-century rectory, notable for the quality of its detailing, both inside and out, and particularly for its imperial staircase, which is unusual in such a relatively modest type of house.