The Court House

House. Dating from the early to mid 16th century, it has undergone later alterations. The house is constructed of uncoursed limestone rubble, with concrete tile roofs. There are stone stacks at the left end, finished in concrete block, and at the right end and front right gable end, also finished in concrete block. It has an L-shaped layout. The front right wing was heightened in the late 18th or early 19th century, building upon an earlier wing, probably from the 17th century. The original main range was originally divided into three rooms on the ground floor, containing an original stack to the left and a later stack added to the right. The first floor originally featured a one-bay chamber and a larger three-bay chamber. The house has two storeys and a two-window arrangement, visible on the front wall of the main range and the inward-facing wall of the wing, both with timber lintels over late 20th-century windows. There is a segmental arch over a late 20th-century window on the ground floor of the wing, and a 20th-century plank door in a 17th-century chamfered architrave to the main range, flanked by 18th/19th-century flat stone arches over late 20th-century windows. Internally, 18th-century panelled doors remain from the house’s use as an inn in the 18th and 19th centuries. The ground floor has stop-chamfered beams and joists. A transverse beam with morticing for a removed partition is directly to the right of the doorway. The principal ground floor room is to the left, featuring bar stops on the beams and joists, and a chamfered bressummer over a large open fireplace with a stone winder staircase rising to the first floor. The roof is a four-bay collar-truss construction, incorporating cranked collars and two tiers of trenched purlins, with splayed scarfs to the principals and wind bracing. The first floor was originally divided into a chamber to the right and a large three-bay chamber to the left. Both were originally open to the roof, and the left-hand chamber had direct access to the principal ground-floor chamber via the stone staircase; this unusual arrangement suggests the original building combined domestic and official purposes, potentially as a Manor Court House, although this is not confirmed by documentary evidence. It is an interesting building that warrants further investigation.