2, the Green, Hook Norton, Oxfordshire

Description

HOOK NORTON

262/0/10011 THE GREEN
26-APR-10 2

GV II
House, C17 and C18, roof rebuilt 1963, house refurbished 1966.

MATERIALS: Coursed ironstone, concrete tile roofs replacing Stonesfield slate.

PLAN: The house is one of a row of attached cottages. It is of three unequal bays which may have originated in a two-cell, end chimney house to which the formerly external northern passage was added. At the rear of the central bay is a two-and-a-half-storey cross wing with a barrel-vaulted cellar; at the rear of the southern-most bay is a single-storey outshut under a lean-to roof. The northern gable wall is offset diagonally from the front building line, the transverse wall with the main stack is unusually thick for an internal wall. Indents in the gable walls may suggest the former roof line, which could have been raised. The entrance passage leads to a living room with a large inglenook fireplace. To the south of it is the parlour. Stairs to the cellar are reached from the rear of the main room. The original stairs to the upper floor have been removed, but may have risen above the cellar stairs, where at first floor level there is a sinous wall enclosed in a cupboard, reminiscent of the profile of a spiral stair.

EXTERIOR: Two-storeys and attics in three bays. The entrance in the left hand, northern bay has a simple doorframe cut into the stonework and a later C20 door. Windows are uPVC in enlarged openings but remains of quarter-moulded and chamfered stone architraves and drip moulds survive, particularly on the ground floor. Two attic dormers have two-light casements. Brick stacks at each gable and over the main fireplace to the left hand side of the central bay.

Rear: while the rear wall of the main house and returns of the cross-wing are of randomly laid ironstone, the gable wall of the cross wing is coursed and has dressed stone quoins. The ground floor south-east corner is chamfered and there is a blocked opening on the first floor of the south return wall. There is a single window at each floor including the attic, but these are also replaced and the first floor window enlarged.

INTERIOR: A wide entrance passage leads to the main living space which has a large inglenook fireplace with stone piers which have diagonal chisel marks. The bressumer and spine beam are chamfered with run-out stops, joists are exposed and have lamb's tongue stops. The floor has large stone flags. To the south is the parlour, which has a chamfered doorframe. Rear cornices and the spine beam have cyma mouldings. Set into the rear wall, and cutting through the cornice, is a round-arched shell-shaped alcove, early C18 in manner, with three shaped shelves and an arch embellished with carved foliate trail with pears, plums and an open rose. A pair of raised and fielded cupboard doors beneath the alcove are replaced but reuse butterfly hinges.

A chamfered door frame in the rear of the main living room leads to stone steps which descend to a cellar with a stone barrel vault and a two-light stone chamfered mullion window in the rear wall.

On the first floor the spine beam, where visible, is of slender scantling with lambs tongue stops. The first floor room of the crosswing has a chamfered doorframe and slender transverse beam. This room has a canted south-east angle. Next to it is a small cupboard with butterfly hinges, referred to in previous reports as a wig cupboard.

HISTORY: No. 2 The Green appears to have been one of a row of later C17 cottages which was enlarged in the C18. It is the second in a row of attached houses, aligned roughly north-south, on the east side of The Green, which is formed of a small group of historic buildings set away from the centre of the village, rather than as the name might imply, at the core. The village has a complex plan and these houses are arranged on plots with a long frontage onto the Green rather than the tighter system of traditional urban burgage plots laid out running back from the street front. Although documents dated 1790 relating to Daniel Salmon, Parish Overseer for the Poor, were found in the first floor rear room during refurbishment, it is not known if he was connected with the house.

Photographs and surveys of the house from the late 1960s and 1974 show the exterior prior to the enlargement of the windows, where the proportions of windows in the rear gable wall are carefully graded, suggesting it was designed to be seen. Internal fittings included two-panel raised and fielded doors, a second small alcove on the upper floor, and although there is now no stack, a fireplace in the corner, presumably the south-east angle, of the first floor rear room.

SOURCES: R Wood-Jones, Traditional Domestic Architecture in the Banbury Region, 1963
Oxford Mail, 12 January 1976, Article: Hunting secrets of time

No. 2 The Green, Hook Norton which dates from the C17 and C18, is designated for the following principal reasons:
* Plan: the evolution of the plan, from cottage to sophisticated house, seen in the context of regional and national types
* Materials: good quality fittings; notably the shell alcove, which is more ornate than usually found in a vernacular house of this type and is indicative of later aggrandisement
* Group value: forms a group of C17 and C18 houses, some of which are listed, which developed round The Green

Reasons for Listing

No. 2 The Green, Hook Norton which dates from the C17 and C18, is recommended for designation for the following principal reasons:
* Plan: the evolution of the plan, from cottage to sophisticated house, seen in the context of regional and national types
* Materials: good quality fittings; notably the shell alcove, which is more ornate than usually found in a vernacular house of this type and is indicative of later aggrandisement
* Group value: forms a group of C17 and C18 houses, some of which are listed, which developed round the Green.

External Links

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British Listed Buildings

History in Structure

2, the Green

A Grade II Listed Building in Hook Norton, Oxfordshire

Coordinates

Description

Reasons for Listing

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