| Description | The Grange, Warley. Late 17th century stone built rural house.
'Cl7. Traditional substation stone house with stone roof. 2 storeys 4 varied mullioned windows to main (garden) front, 2 to ground storey very long and with drip mouldings. Arched doorway. Some C19 alterations in same manner especially at rear'.
(English Heritage listed building description. Date listed 03/11/1954. http://list.english heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1133890. Web site accessed 28/01/2013).
The Grange 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. The fieldwork report is transcribed below:
'This is a stone house, dating probably to the second half of the 17th century. Alterations to the plan were effected in the early 18th century and additions were made at the rear in the 19th century.
The house faces south and has a linear plan of three cells, with an outshut along the rear. The walling is in well coursed gritstone. On the ground floor the windows have recessed splayed mullions; the first floor have flush splayed mullions which were heightened in the 19th century. A continuous hood mould runs over the ground floor openings, rising for the door surround and with decorative carved stops on either side of the doorway the initials 'A (W?) M' have been worked into the hood mould, as have two shields which presumably carried heraldic devices originally. Much of the rest of the detail on the south front is of 19th century date, when the house was 'Gothicised'.
The main doorway, with recessed arched head set in a square, chamfered surround, opened originally into a through passage. Today it opens into a wide entrance hall, the extra width having been taken out of the housebody to the east. The evidence suggests that the house body has seen three stages in its heating arrangements. The disposition of the windows indicates that originally the room was heated by a fireplace backing onto the through passage in the conventional local style. This firehood may have been replaced in 1711, the date which appears on the fireplace in the housebody. The fireplace has wide a segmental opening with a cyma moulding running around lintel and jambs. The surround has carved panels thus:
W
I E
1 7 1 1
The position of the fireplace today is unlikely to be its original position, however, for it was not the practise in the early 18th century to provide a large entrance hall. It is much more likely that the fireplace was originally positioned so as to back onto the passage in the same way as had the hood, and that the passage was still in it original form. Only in the 19th century is it conceivable that the fireplace should be moved to the east to give a smaller main room and a passage that became an entrance hall. An alternative explanation is that the middle phase was omitted and that the fireplace was reused in the 19th century from another house; this is unlikely, for it is known that Isaac Wilkinson bought the Grange in 1711, and the initials on the fireplace show that he immediately set about modernising his new dwelling. |