Building record 535/6/1 - Nos. 19 & 21 High Street & Attached Barn

Originally a 15th-century hall house which was sub-divided in the 16th century. Externally, it looks 18th century in date.

{1} 2 cottages. C17/early C18. Cruck-framed. Coursed squared ironstone, thatch roofs, brick end and ridge stacks. L-plan. 2 storeys. No.19 has a 2-window range facing street with 1 and 3-light small-pane leaded casement windows with timber lintels, and stone coped gables. A 4-panel door and casement windows of 2 and 3 lights to right side. A 3-light casement window to first floor in eyebrow dormer. Small attached barn to right with plank door and cruciform slit window. Interior: No.19 has stone-flagged floors and early C18 fireplace with cased surround. No.21 has lobby-entry plan and cruck frame. Stop-chamfered spine beams, two open fireplaces with stop-chamfered bressumers, stone-flagged floors and raised cruck truss.

{3} The inspection shows that numbers 19 and 21 High Street comprise a single building. This applies particularly to Block B of 19 and 21. Since access to number 21 was not possible at the time of inspection, some conjecture must be made in relation to that building. The cruck building appears to continue eastwards with possibly another two or three bays assuming that the bays are all 3 metres (10 feet) wide. Thus we have a four bay hall house of around the early fifteenth century running east/west. In the mid fifteenth century the addition of a block at right angles, possibly as a high end chamber, provides us with Block B. At the end of the sixteenth century a large chimney stack was added to the east/west block, along with the first floor. There is now no visible evidence of early flooring over in Block B. Either the building was founded on low stone walls or it began to be enclosed in stone during the seventeenth century, possibly with the base of the present south chimney being constructed at that time. This may also link with the insertion of the mullion and transon window lighting the present staircase.
Early in the eighteenth century the walls were built up to give the end gables to Block A, with the consequent re-building of the roof and flooring of the attic. The question then to be answered is; where was the staircase? Access to the first floor may have been through Block B, though the position of the mullion and transon window suggests a two storey high space here. It was not possible for the attic to be reached through number 21 because of the position of the chimney. Since the ceiling above Room 3 on the first floor is plasterboard and fairly recent, it may well indicate that a small newell stair leading to the attic room was in this position.
The building was one property in 1779, but may have been divided during the nineteenth century. However, the present stair and the lean-to are more likely to belong to the early twentieth century.

{4} Nos. 19 and 21 High Street constitute an early C15th cruck framed building, with a mid C15th wing. The later wing, fronting the high street has an arched braced central cruck truss and re-set sooted rafters. The earlier bulid has more heavily sooted rafters and truss with sooted thatch. A chimney was inserted with floor in the late C16th in the older build, with the possibility of an end chimney to the south of the newer build in the C17th. The newer block was encased in stone, with stone gable parapets and the roof re organised early in the eighteenth century. This block has good eighteenth century doors, fireplaces etc. The building was divided during the nineteenth century with the addition of a brick and corrugated iron lean-to early in the twentieth century.

{5} A mid-C15 four-bay cruck-framed hall house with a cross wing to the west, divided into two units and extended to the east in the early C18. No. 19, closest to the street, was encased in stone and the front cross wing was remodelled in the early C18, and No. 21 was similarly cased with stone at the same time.
MATERIALS: Both buildings were timber framed and encased in local coursed ironstone under thatched gabled roofs.
PLAN: Both houses had their halls floored in the C16. In the C19 the pattern of occupation changed so that No. 19 was reduced to the front range and a single bay of the east-west range behind it, plus two outbuildings on the north side of No. 21. No. 21 occupies the remainder of the site, with its eastern half built to a lobby-entrance plan.
EXTERIOR
The west façade is of two storeys in two window bays and is constructed of coursed ironstone under a gabled thatched roof. The elevation is lit through a two-light and a three-light mid-C18 leaded casement to the ground floor and by two three-light casements to the upper floor, the three-light examples having central openers. Overhanging eaves and internal C19 brick gable-end stacks to the south and north. The north return has no openings apart from a single-light attic window but the south return is lit through a single-light first-floor casement. A four-light ground-floor casement is set in the east elevation. The rear wing is of one storey and dormer attic, and is also externally of coursed ironstone. The south side has a four-panelled door leading to the entrance hall in the angle with the front range below a two-light upper cross-casement, and there is a two-light and a three-light ground-floor casement to the east. Above these is an eyebrow dormer fitted with a three-light casement. A C19 brick ridge stack marks the modern division of the two properties, as does the change in treatment of the ornamental thatched roof ridge. The north elevation has two mid-C19 red-brick outshuts under sloping corrugated iron roofs entered from the west via a plank door. The narrower west outshut has a fixed three-light window to the north and the wider east block a three-light casement facing west.
The eastern building is also of one storey and dormer attic and of the same construction but there is a lobby-entrance plan created in the early C18. To the extreme left of the south elevation is a plank door with a small window pane and this is followed by a C20 two-light casement and a plank door immediately under the red-brick C19 ridge stack. The east and west returns have no openings, and the north elevation is not visible.
INTERIORS
No. 19.
The south entrance leads to a stone-flagged staircase hall with a late C19 stick-baluster closed-string staircase with turned newels. This rises in a single flight against the east wall, and at the north end of the passage is a panelled door leading to the western outshut. Two further doorways open to the west into the two ground-floor rooms. The northern of these has a cupboard in the north wall and a chamfered spine beam running north-south which continues into the larger southern room. Early C18 floorboards. The southern room also has early C18 floorboards running in a contrary direction and has a recessed window in the east wall at the south end with two-panel folding shutters. In the east wall is a good early C18 timber eared chimneypiece with a dentil cornice and a moulded mantelshelf, and is flanked to the right and left by two-panelled C18 cupboard doors.
The first-floor staircase landing has a cupboard opening off it to the east, with a two-panel door hung on strap hinges, and the stick-balustrade of the staircase returns to a second doorway under a glazed overlight leading to a plain room. To the west are a further two rooms, the northern of which has a chamfered spine beam and an early C18 timber eared and bolection-moulded chimneypiece containing a cast-iron hob grate. The southern room has a small C19 fire opening in the south wall and a deep cupboard to its right, a small room (possibly a garderobe), lit through the window noted on the exterior return wall.
The roof of the front street range has a single central raised cruck truss aligned east-west, smoke-blackened from the open hall hearth. The two split blades rise to a chamfered saddle upon which is a square-section ridge piece pegged through the saddle, and there are upper and lower collars with corresponding mortise holes for a central vertical brace. The lower collars are supported on arched braces, and the cruck blades drop to the level of the first floor. Originally there was a single tier of passing purlins supporting the secondary rafters, but other purlins have been added to the east side in the C18 and the roof altered on the west side. A second pair of cruck blades is aligned north-south against the east wall of the attic in line with another in the rear wing (which is now part of No. 21), and this also has a saddle with a ridge piece pegged through it but the collars have been removed to allow the insertion of an early C18 two-plank door through the masonry wall into a second roof chamber. Here the roof structure has a ridge piece, one tier of purlins with arched windbracing and rough secondary rafters, all replaced in the early C18.
No. 21.
Opening from the lobby entrance is the sitting room which is heated by a wide inglenook fireplace under a chamfered bressumer with run-out stops carried on coursed ironstone jambs. The hearth is paved with a mixture of C18 flags and C16 bricks. Within the inglenook to one side is a two-panelled C16 cupboard door, and opposite is a triangular salt niche over a cast-iron bread oven door. To the side of the fire opening is a late C16 small-panelled oak cupboard door on strap hinges, the panelling carved in masons mitre. Next to and above it is further late C16 panelling of the same type. The kitchen has a stone-flagged floor and a second wide inglenook fireplace under a chamfered bressumer in which is an early C18 domed brick bread oven closed by a cast-iron door.
On the first-floor one bedroom has oak floorboards and a small rebuilt brick fire opening, to the right of which is a three-plank cupboard door. The cruck trusses are visible descending to tie beams below a lower collar and a tier of purlins. The roof of the western unit has, over the boarded upper collars, the apex of the two upper cruck trusses with saddles and a ridge piece pegged through the saddle and a further tier of purlins supporting rough-cut secondary rafters.
The north outshuts have utilitarian fittings including two plank doors and the remains of a fire opening in the north wall.
HISTORY
Byfield adjoins the Warwickshire border in the south-west of Northamptonshire and has a long history; a Roman villa and a separate settlement have been unearthed in the north part of the parish. Both early settlements at Westhorp and the village itself are mentioned in Domesday book. The village is laid out on the double-loop plan, in a figure-of-eight street pattern, which is common in wooded areas close to the Warwickshire and Leicestershire borders and in north Bedfordshire. There are large areas of Marlstone exposed to the high ground around the village, and in the four river valleys is Lower and Middle Lias clay. Many of the houses in the village are either timber framed or of local ironstone, and some, including Nos. 19 and 21 High Street, incorporate both.
The economy has always been based on agriculture and until the C19 on ironstone quarrying. The area was enclosed in 1778, but the remains of early ridge-and-furrow field systems can still be distinguished from the air. There are a good many early burgage plots in the village arranged with the short edge towards the street. The site of No's 19 and 21 is an example of that early planning.
In the middle of the C15 a cruck-framed four-bay open hall house was built lying east-west with a cross wing at the front running north-south, and in the early C18 this cross wing was extended to the south and encased in ironstone, as was the remainder of the building (No. 19). A second house, No. 21, oriented east-west, was built in the mid-C15 butting up to the east gable of No. 19 off-set from it to the north, so that the ridges of the two parts are not in line.
SOURCES
N.W. Alcock, Cruck Construction: an Introduction and Catalogue, CBA Research Report No. 42 (1981)
Eric Mercer, English Vernacular Houses, RCHME (1975), 97-113
Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner, Buildings of England. Northamptonshire (2nd. Ed. 1973), 133
Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the County of Northamptonshire, Vol. III, (1981), 33-34
John M. Stearne, The Northamptonshire Landscape (1974), 98
J. Cormier, 19 High Street Byfield Northamptonshire: Report on Building Investigation and Recording (2000)
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION DECISION
Nos. 19 and 21 High Street, Byfield, Daventry, Northamptonshire are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* They are buildings of the C15 which survive well and show evidence of the early open-hall phase, notably smoke blackened trusses and thatch.
* The C16 flooring of the halls is illustrative of a classic phase of social change and adds to the interest.
* There are good surviving internal features, including fireplaces, bread ovens and C18 and C16 cupboards.

{6} The building contained very few timbers suitable for dendrochronological dating, and these produced inconclusive results.

{8} Undated photo;

<1> Clews Architects, 1980s, Database for Listing of Historic Buildings of Special Architectural Interest: Northamptonshire, 16/22 (checked) (Digital archive). SNN102353.

<2> List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest ("Greenback"), F05 (unchecked) (Catalogue). SNN44900.

<3> Cormier J., 2000, 19 High Street, Byfield, Northamptonshire: Report on Building Investigation and Recording, (checked) (Report). SNN104760.

<4> Cormier J., 2000, SMR report form, (checked) (SMR Report Form). SNN104755.

<5> English Heritage, 2000, Listed Buildings Online, (checked) (Database). SNN105526.

<6> BRIDGE M.C., 2001, Tree-ring analysis of timbers from 19 High Street, Byfield, Northamptonshire, (checked) (Report). SNN108030.

<7> Roger Coy Partnership, 2000, Nos. 19 and 21 High Street, Byfield, (checked) (Photographic prints (COL)). SNN108031.

<8> Photographs of buildings in Byfield (Photographs). SNN111843.

<9> Bailey, B, Pevsner, N, and Cherry, B, 2013, The Buildings of England: Northamptonshire, p. 151 (Book). SNN111989.

Record last edited

Mar 8 2024 11:06AM