De Salis House And De Salis Cottage

De Salis House and De Salis Cottage

A former house, now part of Wells Cathedral School. The building dates from the late 14th century with substantial 15th-century work, followed by various alterations and additions in the 17th century, internal restructuring in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and late 19th and 20th-century modifications.

The building is constructed of random local stone rubble with ashlar dressings, featuring an all-ashlar porch. The roof is Welsh slate with a double pitch and sawn stone ridge between coped gables, with stone chimney stacks.

The plan is complex due to successive building phases. The front 15th-century range forms an E-plan with the former hall positioned to the left of the entrance porch, though the interior has been reconfigured onto two floors. Behind this, running the full width and extending further south, is an earlier range containing a former 14th-century first-floor hall, with a late 19th-century cross wing added at the left (north) end.

The exterior is partly single-storey and partly two-storey, arranged in five bays. Bay 1 is a single-storey projection with a chimney stack on the return face, displaying a battlemented parapet with quatrefoil panels to the merlons and a 2-centred arched hoodmould from a former window. Bay 2 is also single-storey with a similar battlemented treatment, and contains an 18-pane sash window set under an older square label with headstops. Bay 3 projects as a gabled porch with angled corner buttresses crowned with pinnacles, featuring a 4-centred outer arch with carved spandrels and a square headstop label. Bay 4 has a 20th-century door and flanking windows at ground-floor level, with a 3-light chamfer-mullioned window in a chamfered reveal above. Bay 5 is a projecting gable with a chimney stack to the crown, containing an 18-pane sash window at ground floor with a flat hoodmould, and a 2-light chamfer-mullioned window without label to the first floor.

A later wing, probably 17th-century, projects westwards from the south-west corner with 20th-century modifications. It is single-storey with attics and comprises four bays.

The rear elevation is rendered rubble in two parts. The left section has four bays with 12-pane sash windows, taken to floor level on the ground floor, with a central gable. The south gable displays a small square stack. The right half features a 2-light casement with mullion and horizontal bars, with a coped gable brought forward over a 2-storey bow. Above this is a 6-light casement with transom surmounting a large 4-centred arch with a deep-set pair of doors.

Interior detailing is predominantly 18th or 19th-century, but major early structural fabric survives in the roof framing of both principal ranges. The porch contains a 4-compartment ceiling opening into a square entrance hall with a baluster staircase. The former solar retains a 3-light 16th-century small-pane casement with 4-centred heads to the lights. The rear wall is notably thick, lined with panelling. To the right of the hall is a blocked doorway to the former service range, and a rear door leads to an internal passageway. The rear rooms are largely late 18th-century in character, whilst front rooms in the wing include a reset stone fireplace with a 4-centred hollow-moulded arch and bread oven, and one 16th-century beam with deep chamfering.

The left wing is heavily subdivided with an inserted floor and a 20th-century iron spiral staircase. The rear range features decorative plasterwork and detailing from the late 18th or early 19th century, with upper rooms also showing late period detailing.

The 15th-century roof of the front range comprises ten bays, including four bays of heavy arch-braced trusses with chamfered wind-braces, ridge purlin, and chamfered butt-tenoned purlins. This is interrupted by later work on the return wing at the south end. Early floorboards survive. Above the rear range lies an extensive and remarkable example of a late 14th-century barrel roof with curved rafters at approximately 500-millimetre centres, some with moulded ribs featuring a hollow-plus-ogee profile. This roof has also been cut into by later work on the return wing.

Historically, the first recorded tenant in the early 12th century was Thomas de Kelmescote, but the house became known for centuries as Lechlade's (sometimes Lichfields), after Thomas de Lechlade, a vicar choral, who was installed there in 1316. The present name derives from Bishop de Salis, who occupied the house from 1915 to 1931. A new tenant in 1689 complained of the expense of repairing it, and upon quitting his tenancy in 1710 was said to have gutted the house in turn. In 1930 approval was granted to convert the building into two dwellings, but in 1955 it was leased to the Cathedral School, which continues to hold it.