Ashford House

Ashford House is a detached house, dated 1703, and likely a rebuilding of 17th-century work. It is constructed of red brick in a Flemish bond, with Ham stone kneelers and copings. The roof is thatched with clay gables and brick end and intermediate chimney stacks. The house is two storeys high with attics and has an irregular six-bay fenestration. A stone plinth is present, along with a saw-tooth dentilled band course between the floors, featuring semi-circular relieving arches over the ground floor openings. Most windows are 3-light casements with rectangular leaded panes, some with iron-framed opening lights and timber lintels. Bay 1 has a single window above and two below; bay 2 has a double-depth upper window with no window below; the upper bay 5’s window is set lower to light the staircase, with a blank space below; bay 3 has a boarded door with a wirework porch on a heavy frame. The west gable has bandwork and a 20th-century door, a small 20th-century casement window to the first floor, and a 4-light leaded attic casement. Above the casement is a plaque with an ovolo-mould surround inscribed '-B 1703'. The rear elevation is similar in character, but the west bay features a 20th-century bay window below an old opening, followed by 4, 4, 2, and single-light hollow chamfered mullioned windows, with a doorway opposite the front door. Above the band course and relieving arches are leaded casement windows. The east window has a lean-to addition below, and the attic has two leaded windows, one a larger 3-light casement, the other a smaller window with a chamfered timber mullion. The interior, only partly viewed, is reported to have a through-passage and a three-room plan, with narrow north-facing rooms added during the rebuilding. Features include chamfered beams with run-out stops, wattle and daub partitioning, a bacon curing chamber with an east gable fireplace, an early 19th-century built-in dresser fitment along one wall of the curing chamber, a stone fireplace backing onto the hall with double-ovolo moulding, and an unexamined roof frame. The building represents an early dated, complete use of brick in this area; similar work in this and Ashill civil parish may be up to 40 years earlier, though typically with stone as the primary structural element, and brick used more decoratively.