The Clocktower

This is a complex of former service buildings – a coach house, a clocktower, and an old barn – dating primarily from the 18th century, with later 19th-century additions and alterations. The main, L-shaped range is built of red brick with sandstone dressings and slate roofs, featuring dentilated eaves. The primary block, facing northeast, is two storeys high and eleven bays wide. It is divided into a five-bay coach house to the left and a five-bay stable section to the right, with the three-storey clocktower positioned in the central bay. The ground floor of both sections has square windows with plain sandstone surrounds, now fitted with modern casements. The coach house features four wide, depressed-arched carriage openings constructed with brown brick and limestone keystones, now with modern boarded doors. A standard entrance with a flat limestone lintel and boarded door is located to the far left. The clocktower’s central entrance is a fine, reused Tudor-arched Jacobean design, with chamfered and moulded jambs and an incorporated plaque bearing an indistinct Latin inscription. Above the entrance is a moulded pediment, and modern glazed doors now fill the opening. Ground-floor windows have similarly reused Jacobean cross-windows, although the mullions and transoms have been removed. The clocktower itself is three stages high, slightly projecting to the front and rear, and has a rectangular plan with coped and kneelered gables. A square, wooden cupola-type bellcote tops the roof, featuring arched openings on each face and a swept pyramidal slate roof with an iron weathervane. A depressed, chamfered-arched entrance on the ground floor gives way to a recessed, ribbed, and boarded door. Above this is an applied oval tablet of Coade stone, bearing a wheatsheaf emblem, dated 1803, and inscribed “Coade and Sealy, London.” A two-light transomed window on the first floor is topped with a heavily molded label that extends to the sides and returns; it now has a modern casement. A circular slate clock face with a moulded sandstone surround is positioned in the gable apex.

Adjoining the main block to the southwest is the old barn, built in a similar style with an extended eastern gable connecting it to the main range. The old barn has a depressed-arched opening to the ground floor with a modern casement window within, with flanking windows of a similar style. Above this is a large, glazed sandstone oculus, and inset into the stonework is a carved stone date plaque, dated 1863. Modern single-story lean-to and catslide additions are present on the northwest side, along with modern catslide dormers in the roof. A large, squat mid-19th century brick chimney, comprised of two stages with a plain cornice band, adjoins the old barn to the southwest. The old barn is partially screened by a low, modern brick wall. The interior of the buildings was not inspected during the survey in 1997.