| Description | Lower Saltonstall (Farm), Warley. High status rural house dating to c.1700.
Late c17/early C18. Traditional stone house with stone roof. 2 storeys. Main (south) front has long mullioned windows with drip mouldings to ground storey. Doorway with lugged architrave and cornice. Plain rear with altered windows and gabled wing. Lower Saltonstall Farmhouse Nos 2 5 and 7 Lower Saltonstall and Greenhill form a group'.
(English Heritage listed building description. Date listed 03/11/1954. http://list.english heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1261488. Web site accessed 21/01/2014)
Lower Saltonstall was the subject of an archaeological assessment by Colum Giles in 1980 as part of the WYAS/RCHME Rural Houses Survey. The sketch plan produced by the assessment is held by WYAAS (Giles, C. (WYAS/RCHME). 1980). The fieldwork report is transcribed below:
'This is a stone house, dating probably to c.1700. The house was not inspected internally, and these few notes are drawn from external evidence only.
The house, whilst not being a very large one, is clearly of high status. It has a linear plan of three cells. It is of two storeys, faces south and is built in well coursed dressed stone. The south front has its original fenestration; the windows have recessed and splayed mullions, the lights being consistently grouped in threes, separated by king mullions. The main doorway opens into the central cell at the opposite end of the room to the fireplace. The door surround is eared and moulded and there is an architrave. The central room is clearly the hall or housebody and the east room a parlour; the rooms share the main stack, which has arcaded panels. The west cell is extraordinarily long in proportion to the rest of the house; it appears to give but a single room, lit by a twelve light window, easily the largest in the house. The six of the windows often give a clue to the status of the rooms, and two ideas may be advanced in this instance. It is possible that the western room was the principal parlour and reception room; it is certainly heated by an original stack on the gable wall. The other suggestions is that the west end gave a large shop or workroom, or perhaps a kitchen. Only an examination of the interior would solve the problem, but perhaps the most tenable theory is that the room is a kitchen/service area, giving the working elements that the house otherwise seems to lack,
In the 18th century a wing was added at the rear, probably to give more service rooms. It might be significant in this respect that the wing is sited close to the west end of the house. That the wing is an addition is demonstrated by the fact that its east wall runs over the surround of a window in the rear wall of the main range.
A very wide lintel has been re set in a garden wall; the lintel is inscribed 'P H 1727''.
(Giles, C. (WYAS/RCHME). 1980. 'Lower Saltonstall, (no.1 ?), Warley').
A second visit in connection with the WYAS/RCHME Rural Houses Survey was made to Lower Saltonstall in 1982 when the interior was inspected. The report produced provides a description of the interior and speculation as to the original function of the rooms. |