| Description | Old Riding, Warley. Mid to late 17th century stone house with timber aisle components.
'Probably C17 incorporating earlier structure. Traditional stone house with stone roof. 2 storeys, Main (west) front has moulded and plain mullioned windows (former with drip mouldings). Some alterations. East side plain. Interior has row of timber posts partially exposed'.
(English Heritage listed building description. Date listed 03/11/1954. http://list.english heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1258951. Web site accessed 23/01/2014).
Old Riding was the subject of an archaeological assessment by Colum Giles in 1980 as part of the WYAS/RCHME Rural Houses Survey. The photographic images 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, dating probably from the mid late 17th century. The house faces west, is of two storeys, and has a linear plan of three cells with a continuous outshut along the rear.
The house is built in thin courses of rubble masonry, with no quoins at the angles. There are some signs of disturbance in the masonry at the angles; these possibly represent scars where the posts of a framed structure have been removed. There is no evidence to support this idea, however. On the west front the windows to central and southern ground floor rooms have recessed splayed mullions; else where the windows all have splayed mullions flush with the surface of the wall. A hood mould runs over the windows to central and southern cells.
The plain doorway (square head, broad chamfer) leads into a passage running right through the houses. To the south of the passage is the house body, heated originally by a firehood backing onto the passage. The bressumer of the firehood survives, supported at the east end by the heck post; the heck post has a beam running north to the reredos wall of the hood; in the soffit of the beam is a groove which took the head of the heck screen. The fire area is lit by a three light window. The housebody has two spine beams, stop chamfered against the bressumer to the north, but plain to the south, where the ends of the beam are hidden within later stone dividing wall. The original division between housebody and parlour to the south was of timber, running west from the principal post now buried within the later stone walls. The parlour is heated by a fireplace in the south wall; the fireplace has a four centred head. The stack for the fireplace must originally have been an external stack on the gable wall, but for some reason this has been removed, only a disturbance in the masonry showing where it has been.
Below the passage lies a further room; the stack here is an addition, and the inferior nature of the windows here suggest that this area provided a service room originally. Further service rooms were accommodated in the outshut at the rear, and it is possible that the original stair also rose from the outshut. The present stair is modern.
The division between main span anb outshut is now largely of stone, but the original was clearly timber. The unusual arcade structure survives well, with three main posts rising to the arcade plate. The posts are set on high stylobates. Rising from the post are, or were, braces to the arcade plate and tie beams. Pegged mortices in the plate between posts and braces suggests that short struts joined the two timbers. Where visible, the soffit of the arcade plate has a groove for the head of a timber screen dividing chambers from outshut. It is not clear whether the outshut was floored. |