Little Wakestone

Little Wakestone

This house possibly dates to the 17th century and has been altered in several phases, including in the late 19th or early 20th century. It was extended in 1962-1963 and about 1965 by Bill Howell of Howell Killick Partridge and Amis.

The early house is built of stone with red brick dressings and a cedar timber frame, with a red clay tile roof. Doors and windows are timber. The early house faces south-east and comprises two bays over two storeys with a hipped roof and a large external stack to the south-west. An extra bay was added about 1965 to the north-east. There are two rooms on the ground floor with a stair to the rear of one of them, and two bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor. The later bay provides an extension to one of the upper rooms and a garden store below.

A glazed link projects to the rear of the early house to the north-west, connecting it with a later wing of roughly square plan, both dating to 1962-1963. The ground falls such that the first floor of the wing is at the same height as the ground floor of the early house. The wing comprises a living and dining area open to the underside of the hipped roof, a galley kitchen and a stair leading to the ground floor which contains two bedrooms, a dressing room, a bathroom and a WC. The wing has two chimneys, one serving the fireplace in the living room and one originally serving a coal-fired Aga.

The entrance front of the whole ensemble faces south-west, where the sloping topography and formal relationship between old and new is clearly expressed. The entrance is central, reached up a flight of steps and set within a short glazed link with a pitched tiled roof. To the east is the flank of the old house, vernacular in character and dominated by its substantial external brick and stone stack. To the west is the later wing, executed in a similar palette of stone, brick, timber, glass and reclaimed clay tiles but introducing contemporary details and elevational treatment.

The early house is of stone with red brick quoins and mullioned casement windows with square leaded lights. It has undergone several phases of remodelling and has had two large buttresses built against its back wall and its flank wall to the north-east, the latter now enclosed within the later bay.

The south-east front has a central plank door with a shallow square bay window to the left beneath a timber-framed, jettied oriel with herringbone brick infill, probably dating to the late 19th or early 20th century. To the right of the door is a large single-storey bay window with a hipped roof. An earlier version may have been part of the 19th or 20th century phase, but it was remodelled to its current form with the addition of a third bay of stone and brick at the north-east end of the house in the 1960s. The flank elevation of this later bay has a timber-framed oriel window in a style to match the later wing.

The later wing has blind loadbearing stone walls with brick dressings to north-west and south-west, the latter where the link connects it to the rear of the old cottage. At ground floor the principal front and back elevations to the north-east and south-west are of stone with brick dressings around window and door openings. Above, the first-floor elevations are slightly jettied and are of timber and glass, a mixture of full-height windows held in timber frames and smaller windows set within walls clad in horizontal timber boards. The first floor and roof are carried on projecting pairs of split beams which clasp storey-height timber columns, holding them just clear of the face of the building.

Some of the early structural members of the old house are exposed within its rooms, revealing evidence of structural intervention. The stair and roof appear to have been rebuilt in the 20th century. The character of a historic interior survives, with some early joinery and an open fireplace on the ground floor.

The interior of the later wing is largely as built, characterised by timber boarded ceilings and exposed structure. The main living area is open to the underside of the roof and walls are either heavily glazed or faced in exposed brick or stone. In some areas, specifically the kitchen and within the stairwell and ground floor lobby, the timber and brick have been painted.

The floor beams are supported across the width of the structure by four full-height timber columns around the stair. The partition walls on the ground floor are of a light sand-coloured brick laid on edge, the frogs exposed in the smaller of the two bedrooms, a device used by the practice elsewhere such as at the University of Birmingham's Ashley Building. At both ground and first floors the depth of the beams is infilled at the wall-head by strips of glazing, allowing in extra light and emphasising the extent to which the structure passes through the envelope of the building.