Hatherley

Hatherley is a house at Moretonhampstead, formerly a farmhouse, dating from the early 16th century with later modifications and additions from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, refronted and modernised in the early 19th century. The walls are rendered granite rubble with a thatched roof ending in gable ends. The right-hand gable chimney stack and axial stack are constructed of granite blocks with brick shafts, while the left-hand gable stack is rendered brick.

The original plan consisted of three rooms and a through-passage with a hall and lower room that were originally open to the roof with a central hearth to the hall. The ceiling was probably inserted in the late 16th or early 17th century, and a hall stack was then inserted backing onto the passage. A gable end stack was added to the inner room. Around the early 17th century, an outshut was added at the rear of the hall with a newel staircase adjoining it in projection. In the early 19th century, the front door of the passage was blocked and a staircase was inserted in that position. A passage was created between the hall and inner room, and a 19th-century framed staircase was inserted in place of the usual stair. The hall and inner room were modernised at this stage, and a stack was inserted at the gable end of the lower room.

The house was refronted in 19th-century Gothic style and is two storeys high. A symmetrical two-window section with a central doorway to the right-hand side of the front is paired with an asymmetrical two-window section to the left. The windows on the right-hand side are early 19th-century two-light casements with depressed arched heads and decorative glazing with stained glass at the top. An early 19th-century six-panelled door with four glazed lights above stands beneath an arched canopy porch supported on four octagonal posts with moulded capitals and square bases. In the left-hand section on the ground floor, roughly at the centre, is a single-light mid-to-late 19th-century casement with small panes, and above it to the left is a similar two-light window. To its right is a late 16th or early 17th-century three-light wood-mullioned window with chamfered mullions and old leaded panes. Early 19th-century iron railings run along the front of the house just in front of it.

At the right gable end on the first floor is a two-light granite mullion window with rebated surround, chamfered mullion, and old leaded panes. At the rear is a central single-storey projection under a continuation of the thatched roof which houses the staircase on the left and has on its left side a rounded edge with a small single-light window in an arched granite surround. A small single-light casement on the front wall lights the outshut, and on its right-hand wall is a four-light wood-mullioned window with slender chamfered mullions, unglazed, which has had a later glazed window inserted behind. Immediately to the right of the outshut is the rear doorway to the former passage, which has a circa early 17th-century ovolo-moulded wooden frame and contemporary wide heavy studded plank door with trident-ended strap hinges. To the right are 19th and 20th-century two-and three-light casements on ground and first floors.

A tall granite rubble garden wall extends from the left-hand (north-east) gable end to the road junction and then extends east for approximately 20 metres, incorporating a pointed granite arched doorway.

The interior contains good features from the two main building phases. Much good early 19th-century joinery is evident in the hall and inner room. Both front ground-floor windows have panelled surrounds, seats, and shutters. The inner room fireplace has a wooden chimneypiece with a decorative Victorian arched opening grate. The staircase at the rear of the inserted passage has curved newels and stick balusters. The hall has a boxed-in beam, a six-panel door to the passage, and a fireplace with a plain wooden chimneypiece and early 19th-century iron grate. On its rear wall are two wall cupboards with glazed doors at the top with rounded heads and ogee-shaped heads below. According to the owner, when plaster was stripped from the walls earlier, panelling was revealed. Two doors either side of the fireplace were introduced by the present owners. The back of the chimneybreast, which formerly faced onto the passage, is typically constructed of dressed granite blocks. The lower room has a heavy plastered cross beam with chamfers. It apparently formerly had two hearths, one large one to take the range and one smaller one, now a cupboard, which people could sit around — this would be fairly typical of the 19th century.

On the first floor, the ceilings are high and the feet of very substantial trusses are visible almost up to collar height. Above the inner room, the rear truss is a jointed cruck with threaded purlins. Access to the roof space is difficult, but above the lower end at least, the timbers appear to be smoke-blackened. All the original roof trusses survive.

This house is interesting not only for its good 16th and 17th-century features and the survival of the roof but also for the high-quality updating which it received in the early 19th century, which is unusual in a relatively unimportant farmhouse.