Ashfield House

Ashfield House is a town house dating from the late 18th or early 19th century, located at the end of a row on School Road. The building is constructed of rendered and colourwashed stone rubble, roughly rectangular in plan.

The main structure consists of a three-bay range facing east towards the road, with two conjoined wings projecting westwards to the rear. The rear wings terminate in central valley and twin gables. Single-storey lean-to extensions are attached to both rear wings, one predating 1842 and the other dating from the late 20th century. The roofs are covered in Welsh slate, except for one inner slope of one wing. The main range and northern wing have brick gable stacks, while a massive external chimney breast projects from the southern end of the main range.

The main east-facing range is three storeys high with a symmetrical three-bay plan and central entrance. The entrance door is a six-panel flush door with batwing fanlight above, set in a deeply recessed opening dating from the 18th or early 19th century. The ground floor windows are tripartite 4:12:4 pane sashes (four over eight panes) flanking the central entrance opening, which is now blocked. The rear wings display irregular fenestration with windows of various periods.

Internally, the principal ground floor rooms flank a central hallway and retain original shutters with shutter boxes. The rear hallway is accessed through an arched opening with chamfered wall edges and contains a winder stair descending to the basement (which extends beneath the northern half only) and a dogleg stair to the first floor. Each staircase is accessed through an 18th or early 19th-century six-panel door. The basement includes an external door at the rear. The first floor principal rooms remain largely unaltered, though some reordering of rooms in the rear wings has occurred. The attic is unimproved. The roof structure throughout is a late 18th or early 19th-century pegged timber construction with single purlins and collars to each truss.

The building appears on the 1842 tithe map as The Plough Inn, though its architectural form indicates it was originally built as a dwelling. Its plan form remained unaltered through the Ordnance Survey mappings of 1886 to 1924. The ground floor doors are a mixture of 18th and 19th-century raised and fielded six-panel doors, with some 19th-century plank doors in the former service rooms.