Lady House

Lady House is a house that originally included a bakery and shop, dating from the early or mid 16th century, with the earliest documentary evidence being a lease from 1542. The building underwent major improvements in the later 16th and 17th centuries, received a 18th century extension, experienced some late 19th century modernisation, and was renovated around 1970.

The main structure is built of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble chimneys topped with brick and a thatch roof. The house follows a 3-room-and-through-passage plan, facing south. An unheated inner room sits at the west end. The hall contains a large axial stack positioned where the former passage was located. The service end room has a projecting front lateral stack. The roofspace is inaccessible, preventing full determination of the building's earliest development, though evidence suggests the original house was open to the roof from end to end, divided by low partition screens and heated by an open hearth fire. The hall fireplace was probably inserted in the late 16th century, the service end room fireplace is later, and the house was progressively floored between the mid 16th and mid 17th centuries. There is evidence that the first inner room chamber once jettied into the upper end of the hall, but when the hall was floored over in the mid 17th century, the first floor partition was moved back. An unheated single-room extension at right angles to the rear of the inner room was added in the 18th century, possibly for agricultural or storage purposes. By the late 19th century, a bakery occupied the space with a massive bread oven added or enlarged within the hall fireplace, while the inner room served as the shop. The lower passage partition was removed in the 20th century.

The house and extension are 2 storeys. The exterior features an irregular 3-window front of 20th century casements with glazing bars. The right end ground floor window has been inserted partly through the service end room stack. A fourth ground floor window serving the inner room now blocks the former bakery shop doorway. The passage front doorway has a 20th century plank door. The large oven housing projects forward to the left of the doorway. The roof is gable-ended to the left and continues in line with that of No.1 Church Gate Cottages.

Internally, the service end room shows no exposed carpentry. Its fireplace is granite with a chamfered lintel, though reduced in width by the front window. The hall fireplace has a granite ashlar back and is topped with a granite relieving arch. The oak lintel features a soffit-chamfered and run-out-stopped profile. An oak doorframe from the passage, partly boxed in, appears to be 17th century with an ovolo-moulded surround. To the right of the hall fireplace is a massive brick bread oven over a proving oven. A stone rubble crosswall at the upper end of the hall may be an original low partition, containing an early to mid 16th century oak shoulder-headed doorframe. Above the crosswall, former jetty joists have been sawn off flush except for one with a curved end supporting the mid 17th century soffit-chamfered and scroll-stepped axial beam flooring over the hall.

Little of the roof is exposed and the roofspace is inaccessible. Only part of the truss over the upper end of the passage can be seen, appearing to be a true cruck truss with its foot exposed descending to floor level beside the passage rear doorway. The rear block has a roughly-chamfered crossbeam of enormous scantling, and the 2-bay roof is carried on an A-frame truss with a pegged and spiked lap-jointed collar.

Lady House is among the earliest, if not the earliest, surviving houses in the village and forms part of an attractive group of listed buildings east of the churchyard.