Stair House

Stair House is a house dating from 1647, with alterations in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is constructed of painted rendered lakeland rubble beneath a Westmorland slate roof laid in diminishing courses, and has gable end stacks. The plan is of a two-cell front lobby entrance type, comprising a hall (firehouse) and a service room (downhouse), with a rear buttery.

The north (front) elevation has two storeys and three bays, with a lobby entrance at the west end. It features a moulded doorcase with a lintel inscribed 'F:F: 1647'. The entrance has modern planked and studded double doors. Above the doorway is a four-by-three-pane window set back in a deep reveal. A small first-floor panel reads 'STAIR HOUSE'. Two wider windows of a similar form flank the ground floor windows, all with glazing bars and some in a horizontal sliding sash configuration. A low-gabled stair tower is central on the rear elevation, with a small nine-pane window below a rough drip mould at mid-wall height. A wide, multi-paned window is to the left on the ground floor, and a doorway to the right.

The interior plan is largely original. The lobby contains a plank door set within a moulded doorcase, facing a baffle wall which forms part of the massive end wall hearth. The deep hearth recess extends almost the full width of the house, and features a timber bressumer and a spice cupboard with a small oak door. The floor is of stone flags. A single spine beam extends from front to rear, featuring stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops. The rear wall has a doorway into the stair tower, and a partition wall between the firehouse and downhouse with a doorway at its northern end. Both doorways have 17th-century oak-panelled doors. The downhouse has a hearth in the end wall, now with an early 20th-century range, and two spine beams extending from either side of the hearth to the partition wall. Below the southern beam is a secondary partition separating the downhouse from a small buttery with stone benches. The stair tower contains a spiral staircase leading to a first-floor access corridor with a stud partition and a rough-fielded oak door. Wide oak floorboards are throughout the first floor.

Stair House is a substantially complete and increasingly rare example of a 17th-century house of lobby entrance plan form. It exhibits vernacular building traditions and interior details characteristic of the upland region in which it is located.