Listed Building: The Monastery (1189534)

House, formerly farmhouse, perhaps originally manor house or grange. Early C14, with C17 and C18 alterations. Restored 1965. Coursed squared limestone, C20 plain-tile roof, stone end stacks, and stone ridge stack to porch. Hall house. 2-storeys; 3 1/2 bays. Glazed door to cross passage has roll-mould and hollow-chamfered doorway, in 2-storey gabled porch to left of centre. Porch has many moulded doorway with hood mould and sculptured head label stops, sexpartite vault with long chamfered ribs and large foliage boss. 1-light window above doorway with pointed trefoil head and hood mould, a 2-light window to left side with broken Decorated tracery, diagonal buttresses and stone-coped gable with kneelers. Two 2-light hall windows to right of porch that to upper end wider and slightly lower. Both have straight heads, hood moulds and restored tracery with pointed trefoil headed lights and transoms. Service bay to left of porch has 2-light leaded windows to ground and first floors with wood lintels and stair turret in angle, with window with pointed head. Service bay has diagonal buttress and stone-coped gable with kneelers. Offset buttress between hall windows. C20 single-storey lean-to extension to rear. Interior: wave moulded stone doorways in wall dividing cross passage from service bay, one to service bay, the other, narrower, to stone spiral stair leading to chamber above and small room over porch. Similar doorway at upper end of hall originally leading to presumed parlour or solar. Posts to spere survive. Substantially original roof. 2-and-half-bay hall roof is separated from service end roof by stone cross wall. Arch-braced spere and intermediate arch-braced trusses to hall roof. Angle-braced arcade plate and wind-braced purlins. (Buildings of England: Northanptonshire, 1973, p405; P.Woodfield, "The Larger Medieval Houses of Northants"; Northamptonshire Archaeology 16, 1981)

Record last edited

Sep 5 2023 3:02PM