Numbers 19 And 21 And Attached Barn

NUMBERS 19 AND 21 AND ATTACHED BARN

This is a mid-15th century four-bay cruck-framed hall house with a cross wing to the west, divided into two units and extended to the east in the early 18th century. Number 19, closest to the street, was encased in stone and the front cross wing was remodelled in the early 18th century. Number 21 was similarly cased with stone at the same time.

Both buildings were originally timber framed and are now encased in local coursed ironstone under thatched gabled roofs. Both houses had their halls floored in the 16th century. In the 19th century the pattern of occupation changed so that Number 19 was reduced to the front range and a single bay of the east-west range behind it, plus two outbuildings on the north side of Number 21. Number 21 occupies the remainder of the site, with its eastern half built to a lobby-entrance plan.

The west façade is of two storeys in two window bays and is constructed of coursed ironstone under a gabled thatched roof. The elevation is lit through a two-light and a three-light mid-18th century leaded casement to the ground floor and by two three-light casements to the upper floor, the three-light examples having central openers. There are overhanging eaves and internal 19th century brick gable-end stacks to the south and north. The north return has no openings apart from a single-light attic window but the south return is lit through a single-light first-floor casement. A four-light ground-floor casement is set in the east elevation.

The rear wing is of one storey and dormer attic, and is also externally of coursed ironstone. The south side has a four-panelled door leading to the entrance hall in the angle with the front range below a two-light upper cross-casement, and there is a two-light and a three-light ground-floor casement to the east. Above these is an eyebrow dormer fitted with a three-light casement. A 19th century brick ridge stack marks the modern division of the two properties, as does the change in treatment of the ornamental thatched roof ridge. The north elevation has two mid-19th century red-brick outshuts under sloping corrugated iron roofs entered from the west via a plank door. The narrower west outshut has a fixed three-light window to the north and the wider east block a three-light casement facing west.

The eastern building is also of one storey and dormer attic and of the same construction but there is a lobby-entrance plan created in the early 18th century. To the extreme left of the south elevation is a plank door with a small window pane and this is followed by a 20th century two-light casement and a plank door immediately under the red-brick 19th century ridge stack. The east and west returns have no openings, and the north elevation is not visible.

Number 19: The south entrance leads to a stone-flagged staircase hall with a late 19th century stick-baluster closed-string staircase with turned newels. This rises in a single flight against the east wall, and at the north end of the passage is a panelled door leading to the western outshut. Two further doorways open to the west into the two ground-floor rooms. The northern of these has a cupboard in the north wall and a chamfered spine beam running north-south which continues into the larger southern room. Both rooms have early 18th century floorboards, running in contrary directions. The southern room has a recessed window in the east wall at the south end with two-panel folding shutters. In the east wall is a good early 18th century timber eared chimneypiece with a dentil cornice and a moulded mantelshelf, flanked to the right and left by two-panelled 18th century cupboard doors.

The first-floor staircase landing has a cupboard opening off it to the east, with a two-panel door hung on strap hinges, and the stick-balustrade of the staircase returns to a second doorway under a glazed overlight leading to a plain room. To the west are a further two rooms, the northern of which has a chamfered spine beam and an early 18th century timber eared and bolection-moulded chimneypiece containing a cast-iron hob grate. The southern room has a small 19th century fire opening in the south wall and a deep cupboard to its right, a small room (possibly a garderobe), lit through the window noted on the exterior return wall.

The roof of the front street range has a single central raised cruck truss aligned east-west, smoke-blackened from the open hall hearth. The two split blades rise to a chamfered saddle upon which is a square-section ridge piece pegged through the saddle, and there are upper and lower collars with corresponding mortise holes for a central vertical brace. The lower collars are supported on arched braces, and the cruck blades drop to the level of the first floor. Originally there was a single tier of passing purlins supporting the secondary rafters, but other purlins have been added to the east side in the 18th century and the roof altered on the west side. A second pair of cruck blades is aligned north-south against the east wall of the attic in line with another in the rear wing (which is now part of Number 21), and this also has a saddle with a ridge piece pegged through it but the collars have been removed to allow the insertion of an early 18th century two-plank door through the masonry wall into a second roof chamber. Here the roof structure has a ridge piece, one tier of purlins with arched windbracing and rough secondary rafters, all replaced in the early 18th century.

Number 21: Opening from the lobby entrance is the sitting room which is heated by a wide inglenook fireplace under a chamfered bressumer with run-out stops carried on coursed ironstone jambs. The hearth is paved with a mixture of 18th century flags and 16th century bricks. Within the inglenook to one side is a two-panelled 16th century cupboard door, and opposite is a triangular salt niche over a cast-iron bread oven door. To the side of the fire opening is a late 16th century small-panelled oak cupboard door on strap hinges, the panelling carved in masons mitre. Next to and above it is further late 16th century panelling of the same type. The kitchen has a stone-flagged floor and a second wide inglenook fireplace under a chamfered bressumer in which is an early 18th century domed brick bread oven closed by a cast-iron door.

On the first floor one bedroom has oak floorboards and a small rebuilt brick fire opening, to the right of which is a three-plank cupboard door. The cruck trusses are visible descending to tie beams below a lower collar and a tier of purlins. The roof of the western unit has, over the boarded upper collars, the apex of the two upper cruck trusses with saddles and a ridge piece pegged through the saddle and a further tier of purlins supporting rough-cut secondary rafters.

The north outshuts have utilitarian fittings including two plank doors and the remains of a fire opening in the north wall.

Byfield adjoins the Warwickshire border in the south-west of Northamptonshire and has a long history; a Roman villa and a separate settlement have been unearthed in the north part of the parish. Both early settlements at Westhorp and the village itself are mentioned in Domesday book. The village is laid out on the double-loop plan, in a figure-of-eight street pattern, which is common in wooded areas close to the Warwickshire and Leicestershire borders and in north Bedfordshire. There are large areas of Marlstone exposed to the high ground around the village, and in the four river valleys is Lower and Middle Lias clay. Many of the houses in the village are either timber framed or of local ironstone, and some, including Numbers 19 and 21 High Street, incorporate both.

The economy has always been based on agriculture and until the 19th century on ironstone quarrying. The area was enclosed in 1778, but the remains of early ridge-and-furrow field systems can still be distinguished from the air. There are a good many early burgage plots in the village arranged with the short edge towards the street. The site of Numbers 19 and 21 is an example of that early planning.

In the middle of the 15th century a cruck-framed four-bay open hall house was built lying east-west with a cross wing at the front running north-south, and in the early 18th century this cross wing was extended to the south and encased in ironstone, as was the remainder of the building (Number 19). A second house, Number 21, oriented east-west, was built in the mid-15th century butting up to the east gable of Number 19 off-set from it to the north, so that the ridges of the two parts are not in line.