Thickthorn House With North Boundary Wall And Gateway

ASHILL CP THICKTHORN CROSS ST31NW

2/20 Thickthorn House (also known as Thickthorn Manor), with north boundary wall and gateway 4.2.58

• II

Detached house. Possibly C16 origins, remodelled in the late C17 and possibly refronted in C18. Red brick in Flemish bond on rubble stone plinth, ashlar dressings; Welsh slate roof in diminishing courses between stepped coped gables; brick end chimney stacks. 'T'-plan with additions; 2-storey east elevation of 3 bays, with single-storey single-bay extensions to each side. Sash windows in plain ashlar surrounds, 20-pane below and 12-pane above; to lower centre bay a 6-panel door with toplights, set under radially-glazed fanlight in semi-circular arched opening into open stone porch with slim Tuscan columns and pilasters, plain entablature and flat roof:side wings have plain parapets and copings, with tall French casement windows in flat-arched gauged brick openings. Return wing westwards of 2 storeys with attics, 3 bays; casement windows, some with leaded lights, others with very small panes and cast-iron frames; in centre 2 raked buttresses to half height, C20 additions; further lean-to on west gable. On north-west corner a 2-storey brick building to match, with high stepped gables suggesting former thatch, now roofed in Welsh slate, and with a weathervane dated 1894: at west end of this building a barn with loft, but at east end an upper room with, in east gable, a 3-light 'Y' traceried pointed arched casement window; some of the walling under this window in lias stone; a lean-to building in random stonework on the north side of this extension, Interior not seen, but reported is a heavily moulded framed ceiling to the hall, and a chamfer-beam panelled ceiling in an inner rood, but much internal work is C19 or C20, The history of the house uncertain; one stone set upside down in the south wall of the wing is dated 1687; the multi-coloured brickwork, with well-burnt headers, is probably earlier C18; the upper rood over the barn could have served as a religious meeting house, Extending eastwards from the north-east corner of the house is the north boundary wall, in English garden wall bond, about 3 metres high, with thin Ham stone coping, with a curved drop at the east end to a pair of rusticated ashlar gate piers with moulded plinth and pyramidal caps, carrying wrot-iron gates, probably C19, having worked arrowheads to middle and top rails, the top rails being curved, and there being curved braces to the bottom panel; the whole adding to the setting of the house. (VAG Report, SRO unpublished, December 1978).

Listing NGR: ST3297216859