Penrhyn, Wall

Description

House, formerly Temperance Hotel, with stable. Early C19. Squared stone with cut quoins and dressings; Welsh slate roof with brick stacks. South elevation in 2 parts: house to right 2 storeys, 3 bays. Central renewed glazed door; 12-pane sash windows, some renewed; all openings in alternating-block surrounds. Coped right gable on deep footstones; end stacks. Taller stable to left, 2 storeys, 2 bays. Central boarded door with similar door on far right; ground floor left part-slatted window, ground floor right 9-pane shortened sash. C20 casements in old openings above. Coped gables. (Listed Building Report)

The house and an adjacent farmbuilding (now incorporated into the house) at the west end look to be of early 19th century date, but the wall between house and farmbuilding, now internal, has a blocked central slit vent of bastle like character at ground floor level, now only visible at the rear of a later fireplace. The wall is only 0.7m thick and so it cannot be claimed that this is certainly a bastle; another factor is that the house, unlike other bastles in Wall, runs at a right angle to the street. The rear wall of the house is of quite small rubble, with 'ghost quoins' showing the junction between the house and added farmbuildings (Ryder 1994-5). (Northumberland HER)

Comments

Wall is a village where the buildings formed a circuit around the central square green (now somewhat encroached upon). The west side of this green is somewhat unclear and this building may have been outside the circuit of 'defences'. If so then it's orientation at right angles to the street (What date is Front Street?) may not be so unusual.