Old Court

Old Court

A large 2½-storey house comprising a main range facing the street with a gabled stair projection behind the centre and a rear wing to the left, forming an approximate L-shaped plan. A lower parallel wing has been added to the left (west) side of the front, and a projection behind the rear wing houses a court room, giving the whole building an approximate T-shaped plan.

The main range features a late 19th-century front of roughcast walls painted white, channelled in the lower storey and scribed above with rusticated quoins. The slate roof has a large rendered 17th-century stack to the right of centre and a 19th-century right end stack with crested ridge tiles. The rear wing has a brick end stack.

The lower storey of the main range has four bays with the entrance to the centre-right, fitted with a porch on timber posts and a replaced door. The other ground-floor windows are late 19th-century metal-frames with thin glazing bars set in earlier openings, with rusticated lintels with heads to the keystones. The upper storey has a sill band on a frieze of small consoles, incorporating five four-pane horned sash windows below a corbelled eaves band. Three equally placed gabled dormers have four-pane horned sash windows under head mouldings, with gables projecting on consoles and featuring fretted barge boards and pendant finials. The right gable end has similar barge boards and finial, with bands continuous with the front sill and eaves bands.

To the left is a lower two-storey wing with a similar roughcast front. The lower storey has three windows with thin metal glazing bars similar to the main range. The upper storey has similar windows to the left and right, carried above the eaves under gablets. The left gable end has a segmental-headed first-floor doorway. The rear has two inserted pairs of French doors with wood-framed casements, carried above the eaves upper right, and a small two-light casement upper left. The two-window west side wall of the north wing has two-light mullioned windows with hood moulds, except lower right which has an inserted wood-framed casement in the original opening retaining its hood mould.

On the east side of the rear of the main range is a triple small-pane horizontal-sliding sash window in the lower storey, immediately right of which is the stair projection with a segmental-headed boarded door in its east wall. In the north wall is a three-light mullioned window with hood mould in the lower storey and a small window to its left, above which is a horizontal-sliding sash window to the upper landing. The middle landing has a three-light small-pane east window with wooden mullions, though stone mullions are retained inside. The north wing retains a two-light mullioned upper-storey window, while in the lower storey is a triple horizontal-sliding sash window to the right and a replaced door to the left under a segmental head. In its gable end, above the lower north projection, is a single attic window in a dressed stone surround left of centre, and a similar upper-storey window to the left side, both with weathered hood moulds.

The north projection is 19th-century but has mainly altered details. In its east wall are inserted garage doors under a steel lintel with double-boarded doors, flanked on the left by a brick lean-to and on the right by a segmental-headed two-light casement. The upper storey has two inserted windows below the eaves. In the north gable end are external stone steps with treads renewed in concrete, leading to a 20th-century boarded door. The northeast angle has voussoirs of a stone arch to a projection further north, while the northwest angle is attached to a separate property.

The interior has a lobby-entry plan with central back-to-back fireplaces to the principal rooms right and left. From the entrance is an unusual tunnel-vaulted passage beneath the combined chimney leading to the rear stair projection. The room to the left of the entrance has a timber lintel to the fireplace and two cross beams. A cross beam in the right-hand room has an ogee stop. The 17th-century full-height open-well stair has turned balusters and newels.

The attic has a four-bay roof with trusses featuring tie and collar beams. Openings through the trusses, which formerly held partitions, have shallow triangular heads. The attic contains a stone fireplace with a rough shelf above it. The north wing has an attic fireplace that has been filled in.