Lovely listing

Listed Buildings

Our house is a Grade II listed building. A listed building is one which has been placed on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. There are just under 500,000 buildings in the UK to which this applies.

According to English Heritage:

Listing helps us acknowledge and understand our shared history.  It marks and celebrates a building's special architectural and historic interest, and also brings it under the consideration of the planning system so that some thought will be taken about its future.

The older a building is, the more likely it is to be listed. All buildings built before 1700 which survive in anything like their original condition are listed, as are most of those built between 1700 and 1840.

Grade II buildings are nationally important and of special interest; 92% of all listed buildings are in this class and it is the most likely grade of listing for a home owner.

A listed building may not be altered without special permission from the local planning authority. This is called listed building consent and is in addition to the normal requirements for planning permission.

(cartoon by the very talented Merrily Harpur)

Our Listing

Our house was listed on 29 July 1983 when it was described as:

C17 house, remodelled in early C19. Coursed rubble, pantile roof. Three storeys; 2 windows, glazing bar sashes. Ground floor has modern bow windows. Heavy flat timber hood on brackets over modern door with plain painted stone surround. Gabled 2-storey wing and 2-storey extension at rear (originally separate cottage or workshop). Date plaque 1819 on front dates re-modelling. Interior has chamfered beams.

The listing is wrong about the date plaque, which is actually 1812, and the hood over the door is stone rather than timber. The listing also fails to mention a number of other historic features such as the inglenook fireplace, elm floorboards, oak doors, iron door furniture, shell-headed buffet and spice cupboard.

 

Application for listed building consent

Before making a formal application for listed building consent and planning permission, our architect has submitted a request for pre-application advice from the planning department at our local council. They will give us an informal assessment of their likely attitude to our proposed application, enabling us to tailor our plans accordingly. Hopefully, this will help to avoid disputes when our actual application is submitted and will enable things to proceed more smoothly and quickly.

Our architect submitted the request just before Christmas. We heard on 4 January that it has been received and registered and that we should hear back from them within 2 to 4 weeks.

House History 2: 1790-1873

For 83 years the house was in the possession of one family, the Shorts. They were cordwainers - the name for makers of shoes and boots who worked with good quality leather, as opposed to cobblers, who literally cobbled together old leather scraps.

2 August 1790

William Roach sold the house to Robert Short of Yate, cordwainer, for £112 10s. Mr Thomas Fereby was the tenant.

Robert Short and his wife, Ann, had two children, George and Jane, baptised at Wickwar in 1765 and 1768.

Thomas Fereby married Hannah Heaven, by licence, at Chipping Sodbury on 9 May 1774.

1793

Robert Short's son, George Short, remodelled the cottage adjoining the house.

21 December 1801

Robert Short died intestate and the house passed to George Short, his only son. Like his father, George was a cordwainer.

George Short was baptised at Wickwar on 1 December 1765. He married Jane Rawbone in Yate on 12 May 1788. George and Jane had two children, Priscilla and George, baptised at Yate on 5 October 1788. Priscilla had been born before her parents' marriage and was baptised under her mother's name of Rawbone.  George and Jane Short had a further nine children baptised at Chipping Sodbury between 1792 and 1810.

1812

George Short remodelled the front of the house, replacing the 17th century gable front with a fashionable Georgian style facade.

15 September 1815

George Short mortgaged the house, together with a property in Yate, for £260 to Thomas Watts, proprietor of the Royal Oak in Chipping Sodbury.

£180 of the money was used to pay off an earlier mortgage on the property in Yate, which George Short and his sister Jane had inherited from their father, George having used the money to buy out Jane's half share.

The other £80 was for George Short's own use. It may well have been used to pay for the building work on the house.

23 April 1818

George Short wrote a promissory note to his son-in-law, John Haynes, in return for a loan of £260 (presumably to pay off the 1815 mortgage).

1 July 1829

George Short signed an indenture granting the reversion of the property to John Haynes upon his own death. This was in settlement of £290 owed by George Short to John Haynes (the 1818 loan of £260 plus £30 accrued interest).

9 May 1833

George Short died, aged 67, and was buried in a large chest tomb, prominently situated at the entrance to the churchyard of St John the Baptist, Chipping Sodbury.

Under the terms of the 1829 indenture, the property passed into the ownership of John Haynes. John, who  was described as a gentleman, was married to George Short's eldest child, Priscilla.

6 June 1841

The census shows the occupants of the house as John and Priscilla Haynes. John was aged between 65 and 69, of independent means and not born in Gloucestershire.

September 1844

John Haynes died and left the house to Priscilla in his will.

30 March 1851

The census shows the occupants of the house were Priscilla Haynes, a widow and house proprietor, aged 64 and born in Yate, and her niece, Elizabeth Short, daughter of Priscilla's brother, Shirley Short.

7 April 1861

The census shows Priscilla Haynes, a widowed house proprietor, aged 74 and born in Yate. She was living alone.

16 August 1864

Priscilla Haynes died childless. Under the terms of her will, the house was to be sold and the proceeds used to pay legacies to her brothers and sisters and their families.

29 June 1866

Priscilla's brother, George Short, bought the property for £140 from her estate. For the first time, the "court or garden" was mentioned and the adjoining cottage was included in the sale. George Short was already tenant of both properties.

George Short was also a cordwainer. He and his wife, Ann, had five children born in Chipping Sodbury between 1829 and 1841.

8 November 1870

George Short died, aged 82. His effects were valued at under £200.

2 April 1871

The census shows that the house was occupied by George Short's son, Shirley Short, a bootmaker, aged 29 and born in Chipping Sodbury. The other members of the household were Shirley's wife, Ann, and sister, Victoria.

Shirley Short had married Ann Endicott in Bristol only a few weeks earlier.

24 October 1871

Shirley Short bought the property for £150 from his father's estate. Shirley was already the tenant of the house and cottage. He was using the cottage as a workshop for his boot and shoe making business.

5 January 1873

Shirley Short died childless, aged only 31. Under the terms of his will, the property passed to his wife, Ann. She sold it four months later.

The Garden

We have a small, walled courtyard garden. In one corner there is a well, underneath which is a large underground cistern with a vaulted stone roof. Water is pumped up from the cistern through a lion's head fountain.

Because the garden faces south and west, and is completely enclosed, it is sunny and sheltered and plants grow well. They need a lot of water, which is provided by the well.

In the centre of the garden is a raised bed with stone walls. It has been planted with a mixture of spring bulbs, summer bedding plants and evergreen shrubs.

Because it is so warm and sheltered, the garden is ideal for barbeques and parties in the summer months. The back door from the kitchen opens directly into the garden, making it easy to carry food and drinks in and out of the house. It is also convenient for picking fresh herbs for cooking.

House History 1:1690-1790

We are very fortunate to have a complete set of deeds dating back to 1751. The earliest deed gives the name of the man who built the house, Francis Cross, and of the owners and tenants who came after him. In amongst the deeds there are also wills, letters and other documents relating to the ownership of the house.

As a keen genealogist, I have enjoyed researching the people associated with the house. The following is a chronology of the owners and tenants for the period 1690 to 1790:

circa 1690

Francis Cross built the house. He was from the parish of Horton, Gloucestershire. He was born circa 1640 and married Margaret Higgs at Horton on 19 March 1665. They had 5 children baptised at Little Sodbury between 1669 and 1684.

unknown date

Henry Wickham was the tenant. Henry was baptised at Chipping Sodbury on 8 May 1670, the son of John Wickham, a woollen draper, and his wife, Edith.

Unknown date

John Clark bought the house from Francis Cross.

Unknown date

David Clark, a Quaker, bought the house from John Clark. David and his wife, Mary, had the births of 4 children recorded at the Quaker Meeting House, Chipping Sodbury, between 1699 and 1707. David paid 2d in the pound Poor Rate in Chipping Sodbury in 1727 and was one of the town bailiffs in 1731.

Quaker Meeting House, Sodbury

 

Unknown date

Nicholas White bought the house from David and Mary Clark. Nicholas was born circa 1677 and married Jane Hillier at Yate on 18 January 1704. He was a mason at Rodford in the parish of Westerleigh, Gloucestershire. He paid the Poor Rate in Chipping Sodbury in 1727. He died on 28 January 1750 and was buried in the nave of St John the Baptist, Chipping Sodbury.

5 December 1751

John Boddily bought the house for £58 from Nicholas White's widow, Elizabeth. John was born about 1704 and married Elizabeth Roach. He was an Innholder.

The tenant was James Taylor.

20 February 1764

John Boddily died and the house passed to his nephew, Thomas Boddily.

29 September 1764

Elizabeth Boddily, widow of John Boddily, bought the house back from his nephew, Thomas, for  £113. Elizabeth was born about 1710.

15 April 1777

Elizabeth Boddily died and the house passed to her brother, William Roach, and sister, Ann Cornwall. William Roach was a grocer in Chipping Sodbury, with a wife called Elizabeth. He died on 27 August 1798.

All dressed up like a Christmas tree

One of the joys of owning an old house is how beautiful it looks when dressed up for Christmas. I thought I would share some pictures with you.

Our old, stone inglenook fireplace, full of antique copper.

The inglenook looks magical at night, when all the candles are lit.

I decorate every available door with wreaths

And the window with cards, candles and ornaments

Christmas cards look beautiful illuminated with candles

And the finishing touch is the seven foot high Christmas tree

Two for the price of one

Our house actually consists of two separate buildings, which were in joint ownership for many years but only combined into one house in the 1920s.

This is the architect's drawing of the front of our house:

It is a three storey house, built around 1690. It originally had a typical 17th century gabled front but was remodelled in 1812 when a flat front was added, with three sets of symmetrical sash windows. The windows on the ground floor were removed in the early 1980s and replaced with Queen Anne style bow windows - a style which is a century too early for the 19th century frontage.  These windows completely destroy the symmetry of the front elevation.

This is the architect's drawing of the back:

On the right can be seen the rear of the three storey house, which extends backwards to form a short L-shape. It has a 17th century gable end, containing the huge chimney for the inglenook fireplace on the ground floor.

On the left is a two storey building dating from around 1620. It was probably built as a stable but was later used as a workshop. At some point a one storey extension was added behind this building, incorporating an outside toilet. The bite out of the left hand side is where there used to be a stone staircase, which was moved into the house in 1975 to form the an internal spiral staircase.

The resulting building has a higgledy-piggledy internal layout and very few right angles:

 

 

 

whilst the complexity of the roofline has to be seen to be believed:

If I wanted to get there, I wouldn't start from here

There's an old joke about the man who asks for directions and is told "If I wanted to get there, I wouldn't start from here."

I mentioned it to our architect this afternoon, as we tried to make sense of the tangle of beams, supports and odd bits of wood which is currently holding up the roof over our staircase, and investigated the changing levels and voids of the staircase space.

How on earth she will turn all that into a workable new staircase design is beyond me, but I'm jolly glad we've hired a professional to take care of such headaches for us.

I hope the old joke won't be a metaphor for the project, which is an ambitious and exciting one. We're planning to do major restoration work on our home, which dates back to the 17th century and is a Grade II listed building. It was modernised in the 1970s, in a way which was unsympathetic to the building's character and damaging to its fabric, but fortunately almost all its period features survived.

Our plans include rebuilding part of the kitchen, replacing windows, removing rendering and pointing which is preventing the building from breathing, and turning two attic rooms into a new master bedroom suite.

This blog will record our progress as, hopefully, we "start from here" and do indeed "get there". We'd be delighted if you'd join us on the journey.