Great Beazleys

Details

HIGH WYCH

403/4/67 WEST ROAD 30-APR-85 (North side) GREAT BEAZLEYS

II House, C17 with C20 extensions.

MATERIALS: Timber frame with plaster and a red tile roof.

PLAN: The original plan is not clear but was perhaps a two-unit house, with a passage from the front door behind the chimney stack.

EXTERIOR: A long two-storey timber-framed and plastered house with a red tile half-hipped roof. The south front is five bays wide, with three-light modern casement windows with small panes and a modern lean-to porch in the centre of the front. The earliest section of the house dates from the C17 and comprises the bays immediately to the left and right of the central chimney stack. The end bay to the west was added in the early C20, though internal evidence suggests re-use of older timbers. The two bays to the right of the front porch and the two-storey block attached to the rear (north-east) are additions of 1967-89 and are not of special interest.

INTERIOR: There is a large red-brick chimney stack on the left side of the entrance hall, with a passage at the rear leading to the principal room. This room has a timber frame of the C17, including wall posts with jowled heads, sill beams and heavy ceiling beams. There is a large brick fireplace with herringbone back and deep-chamfered bressumer. The main feature of interest is a stop-chamfered axial beam with 'I.R. 1612' carefully cut on the south face. The western end of the room beyond this beam was added in the early C20. Two of the bedrooms on the first floor have exposed C17 timbers including extended jowl posts and tiebeams. The roof was rebuilt to a flatter pitch by adapting the old roof structure; internal evidence shows this was a clasped purlin roof with wind braces.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: The detached block to the south-east of the house, comprising Beazleys Cottage and two garages, is excluded from the listing as it was built in the 1970s and does not have any special interest.

HISTORY: Great Beazleys was built in the C17; there is a beam dated 1612 in the oldest part of the house. The western end was built in the early C20, by 1910, and appears on the 1921 OS map. The house was considerably extended to the east and north-east in the years 1967-89. To the south-east of the house there was a barn of sun-dried brick (mentioned by the Victoria County History and the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England in the early C20), but this was demolished and replaced with a garage and cottage block in the 1970s.

SOURCES: Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, Inventory of the Historical Monuments of Hertfordshire (1910), 204. The Victoria History of the Counties of England (ed. H. Arthur Doubleday), The Victoria History of the County of Hertford, Vol. III (1912), 334.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION DECISION: Great Beazleys is designated at grade II, for the following principal reasons: * The survival of a significant proportion of C17 fabric at the core of the house * The high quality of the exposed timber framing, including a stop-chamfered axial beam with 'I.R. 1612' carefully cut on the south face.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

394437

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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