Court House East And Court House West

This property comprises two dwellings, originally a single house, dating to around the late 15th century. It has undergone substantial alterations and extensions in the late 16th/early 17th century, the 18th century, and again around 1870. The construction is primarily blue lias rubble with roughcast, incorporating Ham stone dressings. The roof is tiled, with Ham stone coping and finials.

The house’s original layout was a 3-room plan with a through-passage, featuring a hall and service wing open to the roof with an open hearth fire, and a parlour with a large fireplace and a solar room above in a cross-wing. In the late 16th or early 17th century, the hall and service wing were floored over to create chambers. Later additions occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries, culminating in Victorian Gothic style extensions around 1870. The final subdivision into two dwellings occurred in the late 20th century.

The south front is asymmetrical, with eight bays. The original house is evident in the central 5-bay range, flanked by gabled cross-wings and a central gabled porch. The porch features a 4-centred arch doorway and a sundial. The original right-hand cross-wing has been extended with a large canted bay. Gabled extensions at each end incorporate oriels on the first floor and corner buttresses. An entrance on the east side has a moulded Ham stone 2-centred arch doorway with carved spandrels, a hood mould, and a moulded timber Tudor arch inner doorframe.

The rear north side includes a hipped roof wing on the right, a gable on the left, and a central range featuring a large stair window, a 17th-century moulded timber 3-light window, and an early 19th-century 4-light window, with a later outshut below. A single-storey wing was added in the early 2000s.

Internally, the parlour displays a framed ceiling with moulded intersecting beams and a late 15th-century moulded Ham stone fireplace with a carved panelled overmantel. The former hall retains a framed ceiling with moulded plastered beams, panelling, and a late 19th-century chimneypiece. The lower end room has a large fireplace with a chamfered timber bressumer and ovens. A dining room (formerly a library) features a Victorian Jacobean style chimneypiece, panelling, and a ceiling with moulded panels. Original and later staircases are present, along with various Victorian chimneypieces and early and late 19th-century panelled doors. Surviving medieval roof features include the principals and tenoned cambered collars of three smoke-blackened trusses over the hall and lower end, although the purlins and wind-braces are missing. The property was the home of the Chisholm-Batten family from the late 18th century until 1979.