The Vicarage, Stable, Summerhouse And Eastern Boundary Wall

The Vicarage, Stable, Summerhouse and Eastern Boundary Wall

This is a vicarage house built in 1845, of unknown architect. It stands in Whitchurch alongside the medieval parish church.

The Vicarage is constructed of red brick with a shallow-pitched slate roof and deep eaves with brackets. It is an L-plan, two-storey building comprising a principal east-west range (itself of two halves) with a stubby wing at its east end. Three brick chimney stacks rise from the roof—two gable-end stacks and one centrally placed—each with a pierced-arch centre.

The north front, facing the entrance, is plain with symmetrically arrayed sash windows with rubbed brick arches on both ground and first floors. A string course runs around the principal eastern half of the building. One window beside the front door is blind. The front door is positioned in the angle against the cross-wing, set within a tall stone keyblock surmounted by a simple decorative stone lintel on the string course. The original six-panel door has been reset in a large, flat-roofed twentieth-century porch. The first floor to the east half has one large sash window; the domestic west half has three smaller ground-floor and three first-floor sashes, lacking the string course found elsewhere. All sashes are original and those in principal rooms retain wooden shutters. The short east wing has one ground-floor and one first-floor sash window.

The principal garden front faces south, with French doors and one large sash window to the east half, and two large sash windows arranged symmetrically above a brick string course. The west service part has two smaller sash windows to the ground floor and two to the first floor, without a string course. The ground floor extends westward as a single-storey lavatory block, with the date 'AT 1847' inscribed on the brick beside its door.

Internally, a long ground-floor hallway provides access to principal family rooms to the east and south. The two southernmost rooms are connected by a double doorway (doors missing), possibly not original. To the west lie domestic rooms including a kitchen and two pantries, all retaining original doors, deep skirting boards, and cornices. Fireplaces are likely nineteenth-century replacements except for a marble example in the more westerly south-facing room. A simple original staircase with mahogany rail serves the upper floor. Upstairs, all original doorways and skirting boards survive, along with some fireplaces and a large original linen cupboard on the landing. Cellars of 1845 lie beneath.

A 2-metre-tall brick wall with a coped top and rounded corners runs south from the south-west corner of the Vicarage, defining the east side of the rear garden. Midway along this wall stands a modest, cubicle-like brick structure with a central gothic-arched doorway flanked by narrow lancet windows. Although it appears to be a summerhouse with a brick wall across its back, it originally functioned as an entrance to the paddock beyond. It is broadly contemporary with the Vicarage.

At the south end of this wall is a pre-existing stable of circa 1800, a two-bay brick building with a dentil eaves course and slate roof. The stable is bonded into the back wall of the Vicarage, with a door giving access from the garden. The east front of the stable is partly of timber construction. A manger survives internally.

Whitchurch Vicarage occupies the site of an earlier priest's house, described in 1822 as a three-bay structure of local character. The present vicarage was constructed in 1845 for Reverend Alfred Turner. According to Holloway's account, it was a "neat, genteel building" surrounded by lawns, gardens and shrubbery. The building ceased to be used for ecclesiastical accommodation after the death of the last incumbent and is now let.

The Vicarage is a restrained and characteristic clergyman's house of the 1840s, relatively unaltered externally. The garden front is markedly the principal elevation, with well-lit rooms overlooking a well-defined garden. Internally, the principal rooms remain unchanged in plan and retain most of their original fixtures and fittings. The building forms a group with the grade II* listed parish church.