Building record 3969/3/1 - The Grooms House (also known as The Three Cocks,The Dower House & Forest Lodge)

{1} House, now part of school. Early C18, perhaps earlier origin. Coursed squared ironstone with limestone ashlar dressings, brick east front, Collyweston stone slate roof, coped gables and moulded stone ridge stacks. 2 storeys and attic. H plan. West front, 5-window wide, has central 6-panelled door with traceried overlight in roll moulded surround. Wooden cross-framed windows with gudgeon-hung, iron-framed leaded casements in roll-moulded surrounds. Plinth, and band between storeys. East front of red brick with burnt headers and 8/8 sashes, otherwise detail as west front. South front has projecting gables to left and right. Gable to left has sash windows (in cross form) to ground and first floors, gable to right has blind cross-framed windows, and both have 2-light segment-headed casement windows to attic. Ionic corner pilasters and moulded eaves. Central linking block has door with overlight in roll-moulded surround and sash windows (in cross form) to left and right at ground and first floor level. Interior: 2 staircases, one dog-leg and one with slender turned balusters and square newels (probably C19), some 2-panel and square-panel doors. Original hall in centre block lined with re-used C17 rectangular panelling. East wing ground floor room lined with bolection-moulded panelling.

{4} One of a series of notes made in the 19th century recorded that ".. The present road was made in 1829 by W Hope to enlarge his park and make the Inn more private. He used the inn as an occaisonal residence when on flying visits…". The name of the Inn, The Three Cocks, was an heraldic rebus of the Cockayne family who had acquired Rushton Hall from the Tresham family estate in 1619 and several generations later sold it to Hope in 1810. A small dark patch between the centre pair first floor windows on the Dower House that can be discerned on the c. 1720 Tillemans drawing, may have been signage for the inn.
The general impression is that the present Dower House was almost certainly built within the period 1690-1710. As such it would have been a comparatively new house when first drawn by Tillemans sometine between 1719 and 1721. Similarly Nunn's survey plan of the Rushton Hall estate of 1729 indicates that a small range of of buildings to the north of the east range were an early feature. The dependency on a medieval, H-Plan form continues to raise questions over whether the building contains parts of an earlier building within it or simply respects the footprint of an earlier building. The present evidence suggests that if such features do exist then they are remarkably well concealed. The preferred interpretation, and one that this report has used, is that the house is a new build of the closing decade of the 17th or very early years of the 18th century. This opinion is hardened by the way the house plan has drawn references from an historical plan form and superimposed what at the time was a modern element on top of it, creating the curious juxtaposition of long axis and short axis features in a single building.

<1> Clews Architects, 1980s, Database for Listing of Historic Buildings of Special Architectural Interest: Northamptonshire, 4/222 (checked) (Digital archive). SNN102353.

<2> 1976, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest ("Greenback"), J12 (unchecked) (Catalogue). SNN100754.

<3> Haywood, R. & Smith, D., 2003, An Archaeological Building Assessment at the Dower House Rushton Northamptonshire, (checked) (Report). SNN103355.

Record last edited

Feb 4 2011 12:55PM