Gayles House

Gayles House is a farmhouse, likely representing an early 19th century rebuilding of an earlier house. It is constructed of coursed dressed stone with a Westmorland slate roof, arranged in an L-shaped plan. The house has two storeys plus a cellar beneath the front rooms, with three bays. It features quoins. The central doorway has six fielded panels above a fanlight with decorative glazing bars, set within an ashlar surround with paterae on cavetto brackets supporting an open pediment. Sash windows with glazing bars have ashlar projecting sills and flush monolithic lintels, which are scored to resemble separate voussoirs. A first-floor band runs along the exterior. The roof is hipped to the right. Chimneys rise from the ridge over the first bay of windows and from behind the third bay. A single-storey lean-to outbuilding to the right is not of particular interest. At the rear, a blocked tall pointed-arched opening is visible in the wall of the kitchen wing, projecting from the rear right of the plan. On the right return of the wing, there are two blocked round-arched windows. The left return is rendered, and features a round-arched landing window with radial glazing bars. The interior of the front door displays an egg-and-dart motif carved round the panels. Other interior doors are of six fielded panels. The kitchen in the rear wing contains a tripartite ashlar fireplace with a coved mantelshelf, and a stone newel staircase is located in the left corner beside the fireplace. Behind the sitting room to the rear left is a cantilevered stone staircase, with moulded treads and wrought-iron stick balusters with a wreathed handrail, leading to a flagged first-floor passage which is supported by a vaulted ceiling above a ground-floor passage. A house on this site was used as a school in the mid-18th century and, in the early 19th century, belonged to the Hird family, who had a brewery in the outbuildings behind the property.