The Old Rectory

The Old Rectory, Bridford

Former rectory with origins in the 15th century or earlier, substantially remodelled in the early 19th century and altered in the 1950s. The building is constructed of whitewashed rendered stone with a tiled roof (formerly thatched) featuring sprocketed eaves, semi-conical at the left end and gabled at the right end. The roof structure includes a rear left lateral stack to the main block enclosed by a rear left wing, a front right lateral stack (shaft dismantled), and an end stack to the rear right wing.

The house follows an overall U-shaped plan. The earliest surviving part dates to probably the 15th century or earlier, consisting of an open hall with remnants of the through passage, located at the right end. In the early 19th century, the house was thoroughly remodelled for Reverend Carrington as an L-shaped arrangement, with two heated rooms to the left divided by an entrance into a stair hall, and a library wing at right angles to the left hand room. The lower end remained single-storey throughout, retaining its medieval roof but with a front lateral stack added. A rear right service wing is probably 18th century in origin but was heavily remodelled in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 1950s, the thatch was replaced with tile and the rear lateral stack of the centre room dismantled. These renovations exposed an important painted plank and muntin screen in the right end room.

The exterior shows two storeys to the left, with the lower end single-storey under a lower roofline. The asymmetrical front has two windows, both positioned in the single-storey right end. The main block has an approximately central 19th-century porch with timber Tuscan columns and a six-panel two-leaf front door. The front elevation is blind to the left of the porch, with a half-glazed 20th-century door to the putative former passage at the right hand of the main block. Fenestration comprises 19th or 20th-century timber casements with glazing bars to the first floor and timber sashes with glazing bars to the ground floor. Two 20th-century timber casements flank the truncated stack at the right end. The left return of the main block features a two-storey canted bay window with four-pane timber sashes, with similar windows to the library.

The interior contains a notable painted medieval plank and muntin screen in the right end room, located approximately two metres above ground level. Expert opinion by E. Clive Rouse considered it to be in situ. Although a doorway has been inserted in the right hand panel with steps up, six of the remaining eight panels retain figure paintings of figures holding lances with penons. Rouse suggested the iconography represents the Elizabethan Nine Worthies, with parallels at Harrington Hall and Amersham, Bucks, making this amongst the earliest sets of Worthies in the country. The putative through passage retains a crossbeam with mortises for a former screen.

The rest of the house retains good features from the early 19th-century remodelling, including a stick baluster stair with a wreathed mahogany handrail, a decorated plaster ceiling frieze in the left hand room with egg and dart moulding, and a fine first floor chamber above with a coved plaster ceiling and decorated plaster frieze.

The roof over the right end is 15th-century work, smoke-blackened and surviving below a later roof structure. It comprises two face-pegged jointed cruck roof trusses with a square-set ridge supported on a saddle, with sooted rafters also surviving. The roof trusses over the higher end are mostly 19th-century work, though one earlier pegged truss may be 17th-century.

Reverend Carrington, Rector of Bridford from 1815 to 1842, wrote "Parochiales Bridfordii" in manuscript, which includes an account of the Rectory as he found it. An important painted screen and part of an unusually early medieval roof survive within this substantially remodelled house.