| Description | Overtown Grange Farm, Walton. Stone originating in the second half of the 17th century.
'House. Late C17 with mid C20 alteration. Well coursed punch dressed stone, modern concrete tile roof. 2 storeys with single storey rear outshut. 3 cell plan with service rooms to rear of 1st and 2nd cells. Quoins. Continuous drip mould rising over former door. All windows are altered with lowered sills and most mullions removed but still retain shallow double chamfered surrounds with almost square reveals. From left to right: former 4 light window with same above; blocked window and window inserted in original doorway; 4 light window to each floor. Coped gables with kneelers and brick stacks; one other ridge stack at junction of first 2 cells. Rear: original doorway obscured by later lean to, small chamfered window above. Outshut breaks forward and has a 3 light window to left of two 2 light windows with windows above inserted under eaves. Left hand return has large external stone stack with shouldered offsets and doorway to right with quoined lintel and tie stone jambs. Gable partly rendered at lst floor level'.
(English Heritage listed building description. Date listed 27/08/1986. http://list.english heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1200137. Web site accessed 16/12/2013).
Overton Grange Farm was the subject of an archaeological assessment by Colum Giles in 1980 81 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. Giles, C. (WYAS/RCHME). 1981). The fieldwork report is transcribed blow:
'This is a stone house, dating from the second half of the 17th century. It is of two and a half storeys, faces east, and has a linear plan of three cells supplemented by an outshut behind the central and southern cells.
The house is built in coursed rubble. The east front retains some of its original detail. A continuous hood moulded runs across the facade, and all the windows retain their splayed reveals, although the recessed mullions have been removed. The gables have flat copings and shaped kneelers.
The main entrance to the house is modern, being a late replacement of a window. The original doorway was in the centre of the east front, in the area now occupied by the window. The hood mould rises in this area to include the lintel of the doorway. This central doorway would have been flanked by two light windows; of these, the eastern one is now the main doorway, and the western one has been blocked.
The central entry opened into the main room, the housebody. This has been reduced in size by the creation of a passage leading form the later doorway through to an original rear door in the west wall; this doorway has an elliptical head and a chamfered surround. It is probable that the division between house body and parlour to the north was on the line of an existing division, suspended beneath stop chamfered cross beams. Both housebody and parlour are heated, the housebody by a stack that is certainly original and the parlour by a stack on the gable wall that is possibly an addition; the stack appears to run over the hood mould to both east and west. In a house of this status and of this date, however, a heated parlour is to be expected, and it is equally possible that the hood mould was intended to stop against the projecting stack. |