The following information was gathered as part of a survey of buildings in Hanslope conducted in 2008.

Summary

A house largely rebuilt in the mid 19th century, but incorporating the gable end of a late 17th or early 18th century building having its axis from NE to SW.

Plan Description

The present house is of stone, two storeys, originally with a thatched roof. It consists of a front range of two polite rooms separated by a stair hall behind the front door, and a back range of service rooms curtailed by an angled rear boundary. The front build has walls 450mm thick including at the back.

The front range has wide keyed wedge lintels over the windows some of which have internal shutters of early Victorian date. Otherwise, there are few original features. The roof over this section of the house has two low pitched trusses with substantial principal rafters pegged at the centre, which have probably been salvaged from elsewhere.

Beam and lintel in rear building The rear range is a separate build, with its own wall built alongside the back wall of the front range. In this narrow compartment, there is one chamfered cross beam with ogee stops, and the opening into the hallway has a massive oak lintel, no doubt surviving from the original building.

Externally, the analysis becomes clearer, as on the gable end a straight joint 2.45m back. From this point, an earlier gable, properly quoined, continues to the point at which the wall angles back, where there are other quoins. There seems little doubt that this is the embedded gable end of an earlier building, of which the chamfered beam in the back range is the centre spine beam, spanning a room 3m wide, and 4,4m deep, from front to back. There is no indication that any further old fabric survives nearer the front of the building.

The date of the front range has been said to be c.1850. There is no architectural/archaeological evidence to dissent from this view. It is also consistent with the evidence from maps, as far as concerns the front range (see below).

However, the maps do not show a building that could provide the gable end of the earlier building, until the map of 1828.

Evidence from maps.

The historic maps do not illustrate a building of the present footprint on this site until the Ordnance Survey map of 1881, although buildings are shown further south-east on the same plot, as illustrated below.

1779 To the right is a section from a map prepared for Edward Watts. The area now occupied by Church Lodge is shown as two separate plots, numbered 205 and 206. Both are described in the index as “Tenement and Garden”. The green border indicates they were part of the estate of Edward Watts. According the accompanying survey the tenants were: 205: Joseph Smith 206: John Gregory
1818 The section to the right was also taken from a map prepared for Edward Watts. The two plots above are now merged into one, numbered 463. The owner is still Edward Watts, and the tenants are recorded as Ann Allen and John Gregory.
1828 The map on the right also comes from a survey made for the Watts family, and still shows the plot owned by them, numbered 463. The ground plan of the buildings has completely changed, if the surveyor can be replied upon.
1881 The map to the right is taken from the first ordnance survey, and shows the plot numbered 471. The ground plan of the buildings now resembles the ground plan of the core of the house today.

Source of above information: Survey by Paul Woodfield, architectural historian. The full survey report is available in the Societies archives.