The Eight Gabled House

The Eight Gabled House is a large detached house dating from the late 16th century, extensively restored in the mid 20th century. It stands as part of an important architectural group that includes the Church of St Michael and a Dovecote.

The house is built of coursed squared and dressed limestone with stone slate roofs and ashlar stacks. The plan is unusually regular and square, with twin gables on each of the four elevations. The interior is organized around a long central staircase hall, entered from the north side and flanked by a square room on each side. A thick fireplace wall runs transversely across the full width, with flues gathered to a single central stack. Beyond this wall on the ground floor is a full-width room, probably originally subdivided. The first floor contains four near-square rooms, open to the roof structure, though a bathroom has been inserted in the 20th century within part of the south-east room.

The exterior elevations are notably regular. All ground and first-floor windows are recessed hollow-chamfered stone-mullioned casements with stopped hood moulds. Single round-headed lights without hood-moulds appear in each gable. The north entrance front features a central 2-light casement flanked by 2-light casements, with a 4-centred doorway in a broad flush surround containing a plank door. A continuous hood mould is raised slightly over the doorway. The other three fronts are similar but feature 3-light casements to the first floor and 3-lights to the ground floor, each with individual hood-moulds. The west front has had a large late 20th-century glazed doorway inserted at the end of the ground-floor long room. All gables have saddle-back copings. The central stack features two conjoined shafts with moulded capping. A well with a built-up surround stands against the splayed corner of the building at the north-east.

The entrance hall has a stone-flagged floor and is flanked by full-height timber-framed partitions, mainly in close studding with some square framing to the first floor. Ground-floor rooms feature broad beams with stopped chamfers and exposed, mostly original beams. The kitchen to the left has a stone floor, a central beam, and a modified wide fireplace with a cambered wood bressumer. The room to the right, at a slightly lower level, has a central and two cornice beams, with a very wide fireplace featuring a large bressumer on chamfered stone cheeks and a bread oven. To the right of the fireplace is a rounded recess with a cobble floor, possibly a former curing chamber. The transverse end room has a 20th-century oak plank floor and four beams, one of which may have been repositioned as they are not evenly spaced. This room contains the large inserted glazed French doorway.

The staircase has a balustrade with a heavy handrail, splat balusters, and square newels with open finial cappings—one of these a 20th-century replacement. The string is solid, with no string or housing on the partition side, giving the staircase a somewhat improvised appearance. The bedrooms have exposed principals with rough and heavy tie-beams set at approximately 1.8 metres from floor level.

The house appears to have been designed with regularity of appearance as an important aspect, making it an unusually early example in this region of Renaissance-influenced design. The cross-gables are not fully framed to the roof structure as would be normal practice.