Castle End Monks Court

Details

SP43SE DEDDINGTON CASTLE STREET (South side) 3/150 Castle End and Monks Court 08/12/55 (Formerly listed as Castle End)

II* Large farmhouse, now 2 dwellings. Early C16 and 1647 (on datestone), altered and extended late C18. Marlstone rubble with ashlar dressings and wooden lintels; coursed squared marlstone with limestone-ashlar dressings; Stonesfield-slate roofs with ashlar stacks. 4-unit plan in 2 builds with added outshut and rear wings. 2 storeys and 2 storeys plus attic. Rubble right half of front is at least partly C16 or earlier, but now has three 16-pane late-C18 sashes at each floor, all with wooden lintels. To left of the windows a fine 4-centre-arched C16 moulded stone doorway with label is sheltered by a 2-storey porch, with a 2-light ovolo-moulded stone-mullioned window above a moulded stone doorway (probably restored) with moulded label and lozenge stops; the gable has a panel inscribed 1647. Probably contemporary, although without the chamfered plinth, is the 3-window range to left, which has similar mullioned windows of 2, 3 and 5 lights aligned below 2 stone gables, and has an additional 2-light window without a label set between the first-floor windows; the ground-floor windows are unusually large but are probably C17. Left end wall has further mullioned windows. Steep-pitched roof has stacks to both gables and to right of centre. Right gable all is rebuilt and returns to a late-C17/C18 rear wing with later windows. To rear of main range a late-C18 outshut, now partly raised, includes a higher section containing a tall arched stair window with Gothick glazing bars; at the left end of the range the outshut extends to rear to link with a small C18 range, probably originally stable and loft, now part of Monks Court. Interior: right half of Castle End has stop-chamfered cross beams and a 2-bay roof. The central truss, with collar and cambered chamfered tiebeam, supports 2 rows of butt purlins. The roof may be early C18 or earlier. Left half has a 2-bay early-C16 roof, with trenched purlins and a ridge beam supported on a fine arch-braced collar truss worked with hollow chamfers. A large Tudor-arched stone fireplace with recessed spandrels and an arched single-light window (now internal) survive at first floor and are probably contemporary with the roof. Monks Court retains a mid-C17 open fireplace with the bressumer chamfer returning down the jambs, but was re-modelled internally late C18 and has joinery of that date, including a stair with stick balusters and an inlaid ramped and wreathed mahogany handrail; the stair hall has a 4-centred plaster vault. The second early-C16 truss illustrated by Wood Jones has been destroyed by the construction of a party wall. There is no evidence of the open hall, but it is likely to have occupied the site of Monks Court. (Buildings of England: Oxfordshire: p571; VCH: Oxfordshire: Vol XI, p97; R. Wood-Jones: Traditional Domestic Architecture in the Banbury Region: 1963, pp222-224)

Listing NGR: SP4700931700

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

243874

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Salzman, L F, The Victoria History of the County of Oxford, (1983), 97
Pevsner, N, Sherwood, J, The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire, (1974), 571
Wood-Jones, R B, Traditional Domestic Architecture in the Banbury Region, (1963), 222-224

End of official list entry

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