Great House including former Barn Range attached to right

Great House including Former Barn Range Attached to Right

This is a one-and-a-half storey house of rubble stone with a slate roof. It has a large gabled dormer with exposed timber framing, and the upper storey projects slightly with an ovolo moulded bressummer. A large rubble ridge stack with three diagonally set brick uppers (the bricks do not appear to be early) stands on the roof, with a further recently built stack to the south. A rubble stone porch with timber framed gable projects from the front.

The principal door is very fine, with a frame dated 1661. It is constructed on the external face of framed vertical boards with ovolo moulded vertical battens and internally of horizontal boards with a mitred frame. The door has been reset lower down and a glazed overlight inserted above it. It is surrounded by a substantial door surround with ogee mouldings. A further modern door stands at the right-hand end. The oriel mullion window in the dormer is a modern construction but may have some historical validity. A cellar with cobbled edging to the flag floor lies beneath the 18th-century wing.

The original structure consisted of a two-bay open hall with a two-bay service end and room or rooms at the upper end where the 18th-century wing stood. Three full cruck trusses remain which framed the hall, and there are partial remains of a fourth cruck and further partition framing at the lower end. The central hall truss is arch-braced with a chamfered soffit and cusping above the collar forming a quatrefoil and two trefoils. All the trusses have a butted apex. The two closed trusses at either end of the hall have notched, lap-jointed head-height rail and two collars, a tall queen post and queen struts, three tiers of chamfered purlins and long windbraces (virtually all modern copies). The roof and wall timbers of the hall bays show some original smoke-blackening; it is not possible to be certain of the other bays.

In the upper end, two reconstructed doorways in the partition have pointed arch heads. The position of the original doorways leading to the lower end bays is denoted by interrupted chamfers along the head rail. Substantial chamfered and scroll stopped ceiling beams presumably date to around 1661. A large inserted "back to back" stone chimney stack stands here; the fireplace on the northern side once had an ornate timber mantel, but this has been cut away in the past. Over the mantel shelf is a frieze of painted plaster, partly damaged by crude mortar repairs and partially obscured by wallpaper, but with two heraldic beasts visible—a unicorn and a lion. The stairs are modern, designed in 17th-century style with pierced splat balusters.

The principal alterations to the exterior in recent years include the reduction of the 18th-century wing to a single storey with its stone chimney upper being re-used at the lower end of the house; alterations to the porch; the provision of new large roof dormers and Velux lights to front and rear elevations; alterations to door and window openings at the lower end; and the replacement of every window with new designs.

Inside, the granary end has been converted to domestic use, parts of the hall bays have been subdivided and new stairs and chimney stack have been inserted. There has also been considerable replacement of structural timbers including many of the purlins, all of the rafters and windbraces, many beams and joists and sections of wall framing and door heads. Some of these are in new oak but there is also substantial re-use of second-hand timbers from elsewhere which show unrelated chamfers, mouldings and mortices. Some structural elements have been moved around within the house—for example, a mullion from one window has been re-used in another opening. Some of the reconstruction is speculative and whole areas of the new works are purely modern in conception, such as a small room in one of the hall bays which has a heavy beamed counterchanged ceiling. Some sections of original smoke blackened plaster infill panels have recently been removed without detailed recording and sandblasting has also taken place.