Old Vicarage

Old Vicarage

A small single-storey building constructed of rubble stonework with a slate roof, comprising six bays. The building features an added lateral stair under a pent roof to the east bay on the north side, a small twentieth-century gabled porch to the central bay, and a lean-to porch at the east end.

The windows are of timber construction with seventeenth-century cyma-quirk-ovolo moulding, mullioned and transomed, with stone drip courses. The west bay contains a four-light window serving the former service end, now the living room. A two-light window is central to the hall, and a three-light window with stone drip course is positioned at the west end. Timber lintels support these openings. A four-light moulded raised dormer window sits within a large gable above the east bay. The rear elevation features a large gable to the east and over part of the centre bay of the original house, with a full-height mullioned and transomed hall window. A two-light sitting room window faces south, matching the north side fenestration. Two twentieth-century windows in the gable light the attic floor.

The trusses suggest that the old vicarage was always stone-walled. The gable ends have been rebuilt and the end trusses lost.

The building originally consisted of a central hall of approximately 24 feet span, with a parlour at the east end, a cross passage, and a further two bays at the west, possibly services with a solar above. The medieval roof survives largely unaltered throughout, comprising two bays over the hall subdivided by intermediate trusses supporting two tiers of purlins with cusped straight windbraces at three levels, including to the ridge. On either side of the cross passage, the trusses have king posts and intermediate struts filled above tie level with wattle and daub. The two main trusses over the west parlour are of arched-braced collar form with king posts rising to the apex, all cusped above the collar. The rafters are seated on stub ties, and knee braces continue the shape to terminals below wall plate level. The intermediate trusses have arched-braced collars with king posts to the ridge, also cusped above the collar. Carvings survive on the lower end of three knee braces in the east parlour end: one depicts a figure of a bishop, one a grotesque mask, and one a fashionable female head dated by her hairstyle to before 1500. The high quality of roof construction continues beyond the cross passage where two trusses are of scissor form with king posts rising from the intersection to the ridge, all again cusped, including braces from king post to ridge, suggesting that these two bays formed a solar at the southwest end. The whole roof was heavily smoke-blackened.

The seventeenth-century remodelling is equally unusual and interesting. The cross passage was retained, and a closet formed at the centre with a stack inserted at the upper end of the hall, bearing the date 1611 on the end of the lintel. The stair projection, enclosing a stone winding newel stair with angled squint windows and a side closet, was probably added in the same building phase to provide access to the new upper chamber formed when the open hall was ceiled. The present kitchen at the east end has a bracket-moulded square-panelled ceiling of four by two bays. An ovolo-moulded timber-framed screen crosses the house between the kitchen and the dining room, and part of a former glazed screen formed of short panelled studs survives at high level across the cross passage, probably related to the central service area formed in the seventeenth century.