Grizzlefield House, including attached garden walls

Summary

A small gentry house built around 1800. By about 1850 it had declined in status to that of a farmhouse with an addition disrupting the original Georgian symmetry.

Reasons for Designation

Grizzlefield House is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a good example of a modest gentry house of the late C18 to early C19 being of vernacular construction but of polite architectural design;
* for the retention of a good range of period features, most notably the pedimented doorcase and fanlight.

History

The vernacular construction but polite architectural detailing suggests that the main part of Grizzlefield House was built sometime between around 1790 and 1820 as a relatively modest gentry house, probably for a member of one of the professions or someone of independent means earning their living through investments. The 1846 tithe map, which shows buildings schematically, depicts the house and a single L shaped range to the north, with the approach lane from the west recorded as being owned by William Sinclair (the 1841 census noted Sinclair as being of independent means), but the surrounding fields being owned and occupied separately, implying that it was not functioning as a farmhouse at this date. The depiction of the house on the tithe map is also suggestive that the lower two-storey addition to the east of the original house had not yet been built.

The Ordnance Survey 1:10560 map surveyed 1853 (which has a more accurate depiction of buildings than the tithe map) shows the eastern addition to the house along with further buildings to the north. Grizzlefield appears to have become a farmhouse by this time: a farm sale is noted in the Yorkshire Gazette (February 24 1855). The first edition Ordnance Survey 1:2500 map surveyed 1891 shows the house and eastern extension as undivided, with a small outbuilding to both east (since demolished) and west, the overall footprint matching that of the 1853 map, labelled as Grizzle Field House.

Since the mid-C19 addition to the east side of the house, unbalancing the original Georgian symmetry, the property has undergone several minor alterations, extensions and refurbishments. Those undertaken since 2001 are generally sympathetically detailed. Alterations to the eastern addition makes it uncertain if this was built as an extension to the original house or if it was originally a separate farm cottage or had some other function. Boxed-in beams (probably steel joists replacing removed walls) and a large kitchen fireplace suggest that the ground floor was originally divided into three, probably with a central kitchen with a sitting room to the south and a staircase on its north side.

Details

House, late C18 or early C19, extended mid-C19 and later.

MATERIALS: red brick with sandstone dressings, Welsh slate roofs. Brickwork laid in Flemish Bond to the front of the original house, generally English Garden Wall Bond elsewhere, retaining some penny-ruled flush pointing.

PLAN: central entrance connecting through to the rear stair hall. Former kitchen to the right of the stair hall now has an inserted access through to the mid-C19 extension to the east and is knocked through to the dining room to the front. The extension is now (2025) an open-plan kitchen. The first-floor landing, central to the original house gives access to the main bedrooms but also to an enclosed stair to the attic and a corridor to the extension, however a truncated service staircase rising from the former kitchen suggests that the first-floor circulation may have been originally divided.

EXTERIOR: front (south): the main house is symmetrical of three bays and two storeys with gable-end stacks and a central entrance. This has a finely carved sandstone door case with fluted pilasters and an open-based pediment accommodating a bats-wing fanlight. The elevation is divided up with a moulded eaves band, sill-level string courses and a plain plinth all in ashlar sandstone. The first-floor windows have monolithic lintels with projecting keystones, ground floor windows have brick flat arches. Window joinery is of sympathetically detailed modern replacements: flush fitted with exposed sash boxes and eight-over-eight pane double -glazed hornless sashes.

The mid-C19 extension to the east is of a single bay and is slightly set back. It is of two storeys with an end stack, the low upper floor partly accommodated in the roof space. Its central ground floor window, which has a flat brick arch, has been enlarged to form a glazed doorway. The first-floor window is a later insertion fitted with a double-glazed horned sash window.

On the west side of the main house, set back in-line with the ridge, is a single-storey screen wall with a lean-to outbuilding built behind. This is a single bay and is stone-coped with a quarter circle ramp down to an altered garden wall. The screen wall has a single inserted opening with modern glazed double doors.

Rear: the main house has a central, round-arched stair window with sympathetically detailed replaced joinery. To the right there is a ground floor window similar to those of the front elevation. To the left there is the 2006 single-storey extension which extends across the rear of the C19 side extension, the two first floor windows above being C19 or later insertions. The roof is fitted with C20 or later roof windows. The rear of the mid-C19 extension has two first floor windows which both appear to be later insertions. The outbuilding to the west has a window and two roof lights.

West gable: the main house has a coped gable with shaped kneelers, the chimney is brick and does not retain coping. It has five chimney pots in line. There is a small, central attic window and a single first-floor window slightly off-set to the rear of centre, both thought to be original openings with sympathetic replaced joinery. The ground floor is blind. The projecting outbuilding built against the screen wall has a small window that is either inserted or altered.

East gable: above the mid-C19 extension the gable of the main house is detailed as its west gable except that it is blind. The gable end of the extension is plain-verged and has a twin-flued chimney set immediately to the rear of the ridge. This extension has a central ground-floor window and two evenly spaced first-floor windows, all with flat brick arches and replaced joinery with two-over-two pane horned sashes. The second ground-floor window is a later insertion.

INTERIOR: the interior retains original cornicing to the entrance and stair halls as well as the front reception rooms which also retain window shutters and fireplaces, although both fire surrounds are considered later replacements. Cornicing to the bedrooms and original kitchen is modern. The original kitchen (now linked via a large, inserted opening to the dining room) also retains its large fireplace fitted with a coal-fired range. The staircase has stick-balusters and a ramped handrail. Interior doors are generally six-panelled and likely to be mostly original. The western half of the house has a two-roomed cellar accessed from the original kitchen beneath remnants of a servants’ staircase to the first floor. The roof structure appears to be largely original of typical construction with timber-pegged through-purlins supported by an open attic truss.

The mid-C19 addition retains a large kitchen fireplace but has been knocked through on the ground floor and also altered on the upper floor.

SUBSIDIARY ITEMS: attached garden walls: extending south from the screen wall on the west side of the main house is a brick-built, stone-coped garden wall with a shaped top including curving ramps. This wall incorporates a blocked round-headed doorway that is impinged upon by the coping indicating that the wall top shape is a later alteration. In addition, there is a less elaborate garden wall built of similar materials to the west of the house.

End of official list entry