| Description | Hartley House, Warley. Early 17th century high status rural house with reused timbers from an earlier building.
'Traditional stone house with stone roof. 2 storeys. Main south front has mullioned windows (a little altered) and. central, 2 storeyed porch with gable, West wing with hipped roof and larger windows, transomed above, Built against hillside to east. Lean to at rear'.
(English Heritage listed building description. Date listed 03/11/1954. http://list.english heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1133922. Web site accessed 10/01/2013).
Hartley Royd was the subject of an archaeological assessment by Colum Giles and Philip Swan in 1979 as part of the WYAS/RCHME Rural House Survey. The photographic images and sketch plan produced by the assessment are held by WYAAS (Giles, C. (WYAS/RCHME). 1979). The fieldwork report is transcribed below:
'This is a stone house of the first half of the 17th century, with later additions and alterations. The house is of two storeys throughout and faces south. On plan it has a main range, with a through passage behind the hall stack, and a projecting wing at the west end. The hall is aisled at the rear.
The south front had many interesting features. The two storey gabled porch protects the main door. The porch seems to be bonded into the masonry of the hall range at first floor level, but not below this. There would appear to be a significant difference in date between house and porch. The porch has a moulded door surround and has flush mullioned windows above.
The hall is built of large blocks of dressed stone in broad courses up to the first floor windows level. The windows lighting the hall and fire area have recessed splayed mullions and a drip mould over. The first floor windows match those to the porch and lower end of the main range, for they have splayed mullions flush with the surface of the wall. The masonry of the top part of the hall matches the lower end of the range; both have thin coursed stonework. It might be suggested, therefore, that the hall range is of more than one build, with an original phase represented by the lower part of the hall and a second phase seeing a rebuilding of the upper part of the hall wall and of the entire lower end, giving these latter elements their common features of window details and masonry style. The hall cannot have been raised, for the aisled construction at the rear of the house demonstrates that the hall must always have risen to tie beam level. A further suggestion might hold that the different phases point to a hall that was once open to the roof, with late 17th century improvements seeing the insertion of a floor in the hall and the insertion of windows to light the newly formed chamber.
Certain features of the house point, however, to a different conclusion. It might be thought that an open hall would be lit by a mullioned and transomed window rather than the simple mullioned window of the present hall. No certain example of a stone open hall survives where the hall is lit simply by a mullioned window. The low window indicates, then, that the hall has always been floored. A possible explanation for the difference in masonry and window style can be in the relative status of the elements involved. The hall, as the hub of the house, has a better finish to its stonework and more elaborate widows, while the chamber over and the lower end and rear of the house, a less important elements, are treated in an inferior manner. Confirmation for this is found in the west wing, where the parlour, the other principal room in the house, is emphasised not only by the projection but also by the good quality stonework and recessed mullions in the windows.
The west wing of the house was largely rebuilt in the 19th century, but it seems that the east and south walls were retained. The drip mould runs around these walls at lower level than on the hall wall. |