Building record 0640800000 - Whitchurch Vicarage

The Vicarage is a large Victorian two storey red brick house with a slate roof, built in the early 19th century. It has sliding sash windows with rubbed brick arches, an attractive fanlight over the front door, with a tall stone keyblock and lintel above, and although a porch has been added to the front, the original 6 panel door has been re-used on the front. Inside the house retains many original details, including a staircase with moulded tread ends, internal shutters on the sashes, stone and marble fire surrounds, and deep cornices. Stone steps with masons chisel marks lead down to a cellar which has wine storage with stone shelves. The house is set in a large garden with an old brick outbuilding on the west side of the house which has had its eaves raised. The Vicarage is considered to be of listable quality (B2).
Grade II. Vicarage house of 1845; architect not known. MATERIALS: Red brick, shallow-pitched slate roof, deep eaves with brackets. EXTERIOR: The Vicarage is an L-plan, two-storey, building, with a principal east-west range (itself of two halves) and a stubby-wing at its east end. It has three brick chimney stacks (two gable, one centre), each with a pierced-arch centre. The north, entrance, front is plain with symmetrically arrayed sash windows with rubbed brick arches to the ground and first floors, and a string course around the principal, eastern, half of the building. One window, alongside the front door, is blind. The front door is set in the angle against the cross-wing. Semi-circular fanlight, modern door. Above the doorway a tall stone keyblock surmounted with a simple decorative stone lintel set on the stringcourse which defines principal east half of the building. The original six-panel door has been reset in a large, flat-roofed, C20 porch (not of architectural interest). One first-floor large sash window to east half of building; three smaller ground-floor and three first-floor sashes to domestic west half of building (which lacks string course). All sashes are original and in principal rooms retain wooden shutters. Short east wing with one ground- and one first-floor sash window. Principal garden front to south with French doors and one large sash window to east half of building, with two large sash widows arranged symmetrically above brick string course. The west, service part of the building has two smaller sash windows to ground floor and two to first; no string course. Ground floor extended westward as single-storey lavatory: 'AT 1847' inscribed on brick by door. Small service court to west with C20 wooden porch (not of interest) against back door. INTERIOR: On the ground floor a long hallway gives access to the principal family rooms to the east and south; the two on the south side have had a double connecting doorway (doors missing), perhaps not original. To the west are the domestic rooms including kitchen and two pantries. All retain original doors, deep skirting boards, and cornices. Fireplaces are probably replacements with the exception of a marble example in the more westerly room to the south. Simple original staircase with mahogany rail. Upstairs all original doorways and skirting boards survive and some fireplaces. Large linen cupboard on landing probably original. Cellars beneath of 1845.
OTHER STRUCTURES: Running south from the south-west corner of the Vicarage a 2m tall brick wall, coped and with rounded corners, defines the east side of the rear garden. Midway down this a modest, cubicle-like, brick structure with a central gothic-arched doorway flanked by narrow 'lancet' windows. Whilst apparently a summerhouse (with a brick wall across its back) this was originally an entrance through to the paddock to the east. Broadly contemporary with Vicarage. To south wall bonded in to back wall of pre-existing, c.1800, two-bay brick stable, with dentil eaves course, slate roof and door giving access from garden. East front of stable partly of timber. Manger survives internally.
HISTORY: Whitchurch Vicarage was built in 1845. Holloway (p.15) tells of the construction in that year for the Reverend Alfred Turner of a 'neat, genteel building' surrounded by lawns, gardens and shrubbery. It occupied the site of an earlier priest's house, described in 1822 as a three-bay structure of local character. The Vicarage ceased to be used for ecclesiastical accommodation after the death of the last incumbent and it is now let.
SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: Whitchurch Vicarage is a restrained and characteristic clergyman's house of 1845, standing alongside the village's medieval parish church. The garden front is markedly the main front, with well-lit rooms overlooking a well-defined garden. The building is relatively unaltered externally, while internally its principal rooms, unchanged in plan, retain most of their fixtures and fittings. It forms a group with its grade II* listed church.
SOURCES: J. Holloway, Two Lectures on the History of Whitchurch (1889) (B3).
Desk-based assessment report on vicarage buildings and associated grounds (B6).