OTHER BUILDINGS OF BEFORE 1600
Heversham Hall
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Heversham Hall from Page 59 of Historic Farmhouses in and around
Westmorland by J H Palmer 1944.
Please click on the image to enlarge |
After the Church this is the most historic and important building in the Parish. It is surrounded by as yet unexamined earth works including a ditch on the south side which may go back to the Dark Ages or even to the Iron Age when the site would have been more or less an island. The core of the present building is a fourteenth century hall which retains its original pointed doorway and four mullioned windows one of which is blocked up by a ‘built in’ dresser of c1700. Two other fourteenth century windows have survived respectively on the staircase and in the sitting room east of the front door. The upper story is probably a rebuild of c.1600 and it has straight headed mullioned windows. The east wing is rebuilding of c.1660 and has kept a round ‘Westmorland’ chimney. A scrap of wall two storeys high to the east of the main house has always been said to have been the remains of a Pele Tower but it looks to be of too flimsy a construction to have been suitable for defensive purposes. The Hall’s main timbers are at least of c.1600 and there are some panelled wall screens. Other panelling was removed to Dallam Tower. The Hall fireplace and adjacent bread oven were inserted about 1700. The Hall’s main feature is an Elizabethan Table whose top is a single slab of oak measuring 13 feet 8 inches in length, 2 feet nine inches wide and 5 inches thick.
The RCHM :- The Royal Commission on Historical Monuments for Westmorland, published in 1936, generally mentioned buildings and features dating from before 1700. It included:
Deepthwaite Bridge - 17th century but widened later.
The Old Grammar School of 1613 and later.
NB The Porch is now in the garden of Plumtree Hall and the dated
inscription is at Dallam School.
The Cock Pit behind the Old Grammar School 27ft across and probably dating from around 1700.
Spout House - probably of c.1600.
In 1936 it still had an original wooden mullioned window.
Parkhouse Barn-eight bays, with tie beams and curved principals of crutch type and curved wind braces-probably 16th century.
Park House farmhouse – partly of before 1600 but much altered.
Lower Haverflatts House dated 1691, spice cupboard 1693.
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Lower Haverflatts Farm 1987. Mrs Dowker is driving Friesians for milking in
the shippon. The date stone in the porch is inscribed W I D 1691.
Most of the original buildings were demolished when the property was converted into housing in the 1990's. Please click on the picture to enlarge |
Rowell Farm ‘built probably in the early 16th century’.
See also Date stones.
But RKB believes more likely to be of c.1580-1620.
Deepthwaite Farmhouse. Probably of around 1600.
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Hincaster Hall from Page 62 of Historic Farmhouses in and around
Westmorland by J H Palmer 1944.
Please click on the image to enlarge |
Hincaster Hall. Main ‘T’ shaped block of c.1580 with and east
wing of c.1720.
Some panelling dated ‘A.M. 1660’ and many ‘round chimneys’.
BUILDINGS C.1600-1750
Halforth, Ninesergh, Mabin Hall and Cragg Yeat
are all mentioned in late medieval documents.
Ninesergh appears to have been completely
rebuilt in the nineteenth century.
The rest may have seventeenth century
parts but their windows and other features are later.
Greenhead Farm is of c1600 and the house retains a studded door and ‘round’ chimneys.
In the village the former Eagle and Child, Church Farm and the row of cottages including the Post Office might contain earlier parts but they all appear to be of the mid eighteenth century or later.
Croft Farm could be of before 1600. It retains traces of a ‘through passage’ which separated human and animal accommodation and probably evolved from a Medieval Long House.
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Leasgill cl9lO. showing Laundry Cottage on the old Low Road to the left and Long View Cottages to the right.
The House in the centre background is Highfield of c.1900. Please click on the image to enlarge |
Laundry Cottage and its neighbour ‘below the road’ at Leasgill appear to be of c1750.
BUILDINGS 1750 -1914
Heversham House.c1770. Some original features including an oriel
bay window and an ornate gateway in garden wall.
The gabled upper storey, staircase window and many other features were installed by the
distinguished architect H.J. Austin (of Austin and Paley) who bought the
property in 1900 and whose daughters lived here until 1968.
Heversham cottage, Woodhouse Lane probably of c.1780.
The Blue Bell at Heversham - formerly the Vicarage until c.1842 then Elm Lawn before becoming the Heversham Hotel in c.1930. Some sixteenth century or earlier masonry may be contained in the massive chimney stacks and outer walls. Some eighteenth and nineteenth century features include a twisted baluster stair case, plaster work and doors. Also there are some stained glass panels of before 1880 and a marble fireplace.
Plumtree Hall. Built c.1815 by Joseph Braithwaite Mayor of Kendal.
Leasgill House probably of c.1780-1800 but which may stand on the site of older properties of the same name.
Rose Cottage c1820 with pointed ‘cottage ornee’ windows. Strickland House next door is of 1876.
High Leasghyll built in 1844 by Archdeacon Robert Wilson Evans as the Vicarage which it remained until1948 when it was bought by the Drew family and renamed.
Woodhouse built for Samuel Holker Haslam in 1856.
Behind it is the Woodhouse Charity Farm of c1790 or earlier.
Eversley (House) built in 1859 for Frank Atkinson Argles to
the design of H. P. Horner of Liverpool.
It was converted into several substantial dwellings in the 1950’s.
Hawbarrow built by Canon Argles in 1899 and extended shortly afterwards.
Horncop 1899-1900.
Tidal Reaches (formerly Ellerhowe) built c.1913 to the design of Stephen Shaw.
Curwen’s survey.
In 1927 J F. Curwen surveyed most old buildings in Heversham and Milnthorpe noting down mainly anecdotal evidence. This was published with little supporting documentation as ‘History of Heversham with Milnthorpe’. It is not a full or even comprehensive ‘history’ but it is still a useful source.
Curwen mentioned the following buildings not mentioned elsewhere in this text:
Low Back Woodhouse owned by Thomas Watson in 1826.
High Woodhouse Farm occupied by John Dodgson in 1766.
Moss Side Farm tenanted by Richard Hodgson in 1770.
Smithy Cottage (probably of before 1700) - William Wilson lived here in 1826.
Park’s Victory Row – first row of cottages at south end of Leasgill built 1815.
Yew Tree occupied by Thomas Crayston in 1737.
Long View Terrace – cottages higher up the road close to The Athenaeum built 1846.
Bank Farm owned by Thomas Wilkinson in 1826.
Leasgill Lodge, probably eighteenth century, owned by Mr Ion in 1861.
Leasgill Cottage owned by John Wilson in 1826.
Between 1881 and 1906 Miss Salkeld ran a strict school
here:
- ‘if a boarder left a draw partly open or a tiny bit of blanket
showing beneath the bed coverlet, the drawer was emptied and the
bed stripped until the lesson was learned.’
This was called ‘female education’.
Bird Cage Cottage. John Reed had a school here in 1845.
TWENTIETH CENTURY DEVELOPMENT
The arrival of piped water from Lupton Reservoir in c.1906 transformed Heversham’s development potential. Un-hampered by later planning controls, between 1915 and 1939 a straggle of substantial villas and smaller bungalows appeared along Woodhouse Lane. Similar property was also built in the between war period in the village street, at the entrance to Dugg Hill, on the Princes Way and at Leasgill. These dwellings set the pattern for subsequent expansion of housing after the Second World War. Three groups of Council Houses were built at Parsons Way Hincaster, at Bay View on Woodhouse Lane and at Crow Wood just north of the Church. In the 1960’s the privately built accommodation included the Dugg Hill estate of bungalows and detached houses at Heversham, bungalows at Greenside, Hincaster and at, Haverwood, Woodhouse. These together with concurrent and subsequent infilling has resulted in Heversham becoming architecturally, as it is socially, mainly a modern suburb.
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Early Twentieth Century Houses in the Village Street.
Please click on the image to enlarge |
Accordingly too, the population of Heversham (with Leasgill) rose from 341 in 1931 to 670 in 1998. In the same period household occupancy dropped from four per dwelling to an average of 1.7. Hence although the population has not doubled the built up area of the village has quadrupled.
Yet through all the changes Heversham remains an historic and a lovely place.
© COPYRIGHT IS RESERVED TO ROGER BINGHAM.