Halford Manor

Halford Manor is a house that may have been built as a small manor house. Dated 1615, with no features indicating an earlier date, it was partly rebuilt in the 19th century. The walls are of partly rendered stone rubble. The roof is gable-ended slate, with a lower level to the left-hand end, and there are four brick stacks — two axial and one at each end.

The plan appears to be a four-room and through-passage arrangement. To the left of the passage is a small unheated room, probably a service room, with a short passage behind leading to what is likely to have been the kitchen, heated by a gable end fireplace. A large hall stands to the right of the passage, heated by an axial fireplace at its higher end. The inner room may originally have been unheated. Behind it, a service wing was added in the mid-19th century. At the same time, the higher end of the house from the passage upwards had its roof raised and its front wall rebuilt.

The exterior presents two storeys in an asymmetrical six-window front. The right-hand part is higher and more regular in appearance due to the 19th-century rebuild. It has sash windows of 12 and 16 panes; the ground floor left-hand window is a replacement. A single-light window sits to the right of centre on the first floor, with a 20th-century part-glazed door below. At the left-hand end of this taller section is a 17th-century single-storey gabled porch with a roll-moulded granite doorframe featuring a cranked head. The head has scroll stops and incised scrolls either side, with the date 1615 and initials T.H. at the centre, topped by a square hoodmould. The contemporary wooden inner doorframe to the house is square-headed and richly moulded, with a wide studded plank door. The lower part of the house to the left has two small-paned two and three-light 19th-century casements; the first floor right-hand one is in a half dormer. A small 20th-century lean-to sits in front of the left-hand end. The rear elevation has a 19th-century wing projecting from the left. To its right is the original hall window — a six-light wooden mullion, chamfered in a mounded surround with moulded mullions on the inside. The passage rear doorway has been blocked, and to its right is a 20th-century single-storey flat-roofed addition.

The interior is of high quality. Between the passage and the hall is a plank and muntin screen with ovolo-moulded muntins on the passage side and more elaborately moulded on the hall side. The fireplace at the higher end of the hall has an ovolo-moulded wooden lintel, though it has been built in somewhat. Leading from the passage to the lower end is a wide double ovolo-moulded doorframe similar to that at the front of the passage. To the lower room and also at the rear of the small intermediate room is a plank and muntin screen with high hollow step stops to the muntins. The lower room has a wide fireplace with a wooden lintel that is chamfered with hollow step stops and a granite jamb.

No original roof trusses survive. Those in the higher part are 19th-century king-post trusses, while those in the lower section are of a more traditional A-frame form, unlikely to be earlier than the mid-18th century.

This was evidently built as a gentry house of considerable quality and is an interesting example of a single-phase early 17th-century house whose plan and features reflect its status.