Howell's House

Howell’s House is a late 17th-century house, with a cellar and attic, exhibiting group value. The house is constructed of painted stone, partly rendered, and has a slate roof. The south-west front features an off-centre entrance doorway with a flat canopy supported on shaped brackets, and a stepped doorhead inscribed ‘1611 HP’. A plank door with strap hinges leads into the house; it is now fitted with 20th-century glazed double doors to the left and a 16-pane horned sash window with four-pane side lights to the right. The first floor has a three-light window above the porch, flanked on each side by 16-pane sashes. A Tudor arched cellar doorway is fitted with a plank door, and to the right is a small barred window. A 19th-century addition extends to the south-east, featuring a hipped roof with a brick end-stack and 16-pane horned sashes on both the first and ground floors. The rear elevation has two adjoining 20th-century lean-to extensions: one with a clay tile roof and the other with a composition tile roof. Four 20th-century windows, each with a 2+2+2 pane configuration, and a 20th-century glazed door are also present. Modern rooflights have been added to the rear roof of the main house.

Entry is into a cross-passage with a hall to the right. At the opposite end of the cross passage is a 17th-century flat-headed doorway with a chamfered wooden frame. Mortices in the soffit of the headbeam mark the position of a former transverse post-and-panel partition, which has since been removed. An unusual open screen composed of closely spaced turned balusters, once stood against this partition and is now re-positioned on a side wall. The ground-floor ceiling beams are chamfered with scroll stops, and the joists are roll moulded at the angles. The ceiling beam mouldings at the service end, now the kitchen, suggest it was formerly partitioned. The hall contains a chamfered wooden fireplace lintel with diagonal stops and a small carved recess on the face. A fireplace stair with a Tudor arched head is located to the left. On the first floor, the principal chamber, likely the former upper parlour, has a Tudor arched wooden fireplace lintel with a small spice cupboard in the side wall. The east wall of the adjoining room incorporates a good, 17th-century three-light ovolo moulded wooden mullion window with iron stanchions. Ceiling mouldings indicate that the first floor was formerly divided into four rooms. An oak baulk staircase with winders leads to a partitioned habitable attic. The feet of the principal rafters are tenoned into the ceiling beams of the floor below. Within the attic partition wall, exceptionally unusual and rare fragments of 17th-century decorative plasterwork remain, including stylised Prince of Wales feathers and the date 1660, presumably to commemorate the Restoration.