Widdrington House, Stamfordham

Description

House. Late C16 or early C17 and mid C19. Random rubble with Welsh slate roof. Double span. 2 storeys, 3 bays.
North range was a bastle house and later the village school. 3 small sashes on ground floor. Large 20-pane sashes above. C20 door in single-storey 1-bay addition on right. Steeply-pitched gabled roof with banded end stacks.
Original 1st-floor door blocked on right return. Original ground-floor door now a niche within house.
South range 3 bays with glazed door and 16-pane sashes.
Interior: Walls of bastle house c.4 ft. thick. Massive beams. Old roof timbers. (Listed Building Report)

The house is a double-pile structure of two parallel two-storeyed three-bay ranges, facing away from the Green. The front range is largely of early 19th century date, but the rear is a much older structure. Measuring c.12m by 7m externally, it has walls of heavy rubble with large roughly-shaped quoins and dressings, 1.2m to 1.3m in thickness. The present windows are 18th or 19th century sashes, but remains of four earlier openings are visible: in the east end a central loop at basement level, a first floor loop near the south end of the wall and on the north a small basement loop near the west end and part of a small chamfered window at first floor level just west of the eastern first floor sash. The lower part of the west end is covered by an addition containing the present entrance passage; in the gable above this, set a little north of centre, are two projecting corbels, said to have formerly carried a bell when the building was the village school; immediately south of these, below the 19th century stack, are what appear to be a further pair of corbels, now cut back, which may have supported an earlier cantilevered stack. The original entry into the house is said to have been by a doorway in the west end which led up a short spiral stair to first floor level, opening alongside a fireplace with a corbelled-out lintel, currently concealed by modern panelling in a bathroom. The owner has a photograph showing the fireplace partially exposed during building works. The arrangement of a first floor doorway in the gable end alongside a fireplace (although no the spiral stair) is paralleled at Rebellion House, High Callerton. A 19th century lintel visible just above the roof of the addition suggests that there has been some alteration to the original arrangements here. The house also retains the trusses of what appears to be its original four-bay roof. These are of heavy principal rafter form, with slightly arched collars, carrying two purlins on each roof slope; they are reminiscent of surviving late 16th or early 17th century roof structures in Allendale (Wooley Farmhouse) and Hexhamshire (Hesleywell). Widdrington House has almost certainly been a bastle, of around 1600. It is referred to by Dixon as 'complete but rebuilt', but no detailed description seems to have appeared in print. The entrance arrangements, if local tradition is correct, sound uncommon and interesting. The house was probably remodelled as a conventional ground floor dwelling in the 18th or early 19th century. At this stage it probably fronted northwards, onto the Green and a single storey outshut, of coursed roughly-squared stone, was added on the south. A little later, the house was 'turned round' and the outshut heightened in coursed rubble to provide a new front block facing south, of typical early 19th century form and proportions, the old bastle being relegated to becoming the rear range (as at Brinkheugh) (Ryder 1994-5). (Northumberland HER)