| Description | Waterstalls (House), Todmorden and Walsden. Early 18th century stone house with added early 19th century laithe.
'House and attached barn. Mid C18. Squared rubble, stone slate roof. 2 cell house to which is added barn to left and possible loom shop to right. Barn has doorway to mistal with large lintel and semi circular arched cart entry. House has doorway with monolithic jambs (C19 insertion), wide 2 light chamfered window with king mullion. Over is smaller 2 light window (lacks mullion). Doorway with remains of porch. Next is another doorway broken in and 3 light chamfered window (lacks one mullion), over is 2 light window. Early C19 added cell has wide doorway with sill tie and 2 light flat faced mullioned window, lst floor has single light. Return wall, has lst floor taking in door. Lacks roof. Outshut to rear of house'.
(English Heritage listed building description. Date listed 22/02/1984. http://list.english heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1314107. Web site accessed 04/10/2013).
Waterstalls was the subject of an archaeological assessment by Colum Giles as part of the WYAS/RCHME Rural House Survey. The photographic image and sketch plan produced by the assessment are held by WYAAS (Giles, C. (WYAS/RCHME). 1980). The fieldwork report is transcribed below:
'This is a stone house, probably of the first half of the 18th century. It is of two storeys, faces south, and is built of coursed rubble masonry, quoined at the angles. The south front has windows with splayed mullions flush with the surface of the wall. The window lighting the west cell, the house body, has very broad lights, possibly a clue to the dating.
The house was entered from the south through a central door; this has a square head and chamfered surrounds. In perhaps the mid 18th century the doorway was protected from the elements by the construction of a single storey gabled porch. The housebody was the main room in the dwelling, heated by a fireplace in the central stack. It has, unusually, a two light window in the west gable wall. To the east lay the parlour; this was unheated originally, a flue being added to the main stack in the 19th century to provide a fireplace. The east cell, too, has a window in the gable wall; this may indicate that a parlour did not occupy the whole of the cell, there being perhaps, a small dairy in the northern third.
The accommodation in the main span of the house was supplemented by further rooms contained within a contemporary outshut to the rear. The outshut is now derelict, but the height of the surviving window sill suggests that it provided a sunken cellar with service rooms over.
Later additions to the house include a laithe to the west and a possible loom shop to the east. The latter dates probably from the late 18th to early 19th century. It gives a single room on two floors; the ground floor room possibly communicated with the parlour, for there are signs of a blocked doorway in the dividing wall. The derelict state of the addition makes it impossible to establish whether the ground floor was heated, but it is clear that the chamber was, for a fire still survives. The chamber has an original doorway in the gable wall; the slope of the hillside makes this easily accessible from the exterior.
The laithe to the west was added probably in the first half of the 19th century. It has a principal rafter/queen strut roof'.
(Giles, C. (WYAS/RCHME). 1980. 'Waterstalls, Bottomley, Todmorden and Walsden'). |