Summary
A house built in the 1750s, used as retail premises in the C20 and divided into two units in the late C20.
Reasons for Designation
Montpelier House and Western House, built as one house in around 1750, is listed for the following principal reasons:
Historic interest:
* for the survival of fabric dating from around 1750.
Architectural interest:
* for its distinguished exterior of flint with cream coloured brick dressings, and symmetrical design, with many features including the sash windows, doors and doorcases;
* for high quality interior features including the marble fireplace with overmantel in the first floor centre room, wall panelling, decorative plaster features and moulded window-surrounds.
Group value:
* for the functional group value it shares with a number of other buildings all designed to face Swaffham’s Market Place. Including the Red Lion Inn (Grade II), 85 Market Place (Grade II), 93 and 95 Market Place (Grade II) and the Greyhound Public House, a building with C16 origins (Grade II).
History
Swaffham’s significance in the medieval period stemmed from its position on the crossroads of the main routes from London, Norwich and King’s Lynn. The first written record of a market in the town, which was established on a triangular-shaped area formed by the convergence of the aforementioned roads, was in 1215 when King John issued a royal writ to the Sherriff of Norfolk to abolish it should it ‘damage the market in Dunham’. It was never abolished and expanded rapidly. The Market Place was probably open to the church on its east side, but later-C17 development closed this off, while the development of The Shambles in the middle in the late C18/early-C19, further reduced the size of the open space. From the mid-C18, for a period of just over a hundred years, Swaffham became one of the most populous parishes in Norfolk and one of the most fashionable centres in the county, attracting many leading West Norfolk Families. A racecourse had been established by 1628, the Assembly Rooms were constructed in 1776-1778, subsequently extended and modernised in 1817, and George Walpole, the Third Earl of Orford (1730-1791), founded a coursing club in 1786. During this period of prosperity much rebuilding took place around the Market Place and the overall character of the town is primarily of mid-late Georgian in date, although there is evidence for C16-C17 work behind many façades. Further rebuilding also took place after ‘The Great Fire of Swaffham’, which probably started in the vicinity of the Blue Boar Inn (now the White Hart) on the afternoon of 14 November 1775, when it was set ablaze by a spark from a nearby blacksmith’s workshop. Fire soon engulfed the densely packed houses and workshops behind the inn and along London Road, with 22 buildings being completely destroyed and a further two badly damaged. The town continued to expand in the C19 when its population increased from 2,200 in 1800 to 3,350 in 1845. It also became an important local administrative centre during this period and acquired several notable buildings, including a National School (1838), Shire Hall (1839) and Corn Hall (1858).
Montpelier House was built around 1750 as a single residence. It is known that the building was renamed Montpelier House some time after 1793 following a visit to Swaffham by Fanny Nelson, Lord Nelson’s wife. She is recorded as having lodged in the town but not exactly where. Her former home in the Leeward Islands was ‘Montpelier’ at Nevis, so it is possible that she stayed there and that the owners later renamed it in her memory.
The Tithe Map of 1840 records the landowner and occupier of the ‘House and yard’ as Anne Kirbell but the footprint on the map itself is not clear. On the first three Ordnance Survey (OS) maps of 1884, 1905 and 1928 the house has a rectangular plan and faces west onto the Market Place. A small adjoining range on the north gable end is depicted as a separate building. On the current OS map, the footprint of this range has been truncated and is incorporated into the main building. It is not clear whether it has been remodelled from the earlier range or rebuilt. A small rear extension to Western House has also since been added.
During the 1920s Montpelier House was the home of Mr Harry Bunting, whose family business was one of the largest employers in the town. Some panelling in the house, said to have come from the Crown Inn, was sold to Messrs Bunting. The house was later used as retail premises, and in the late C20 it was divided into two units, Montpelier House (number 89) and Western House (number 91).
Details
A house built in the 1750s, used as retail premises in the C20 and divided into two units in the late C20.
MATERIALS: the front range is of knapped flint with gault-brick dressings, whilst the rear range is of handmade red brick. Roof covering of black-glazed pantiles.
PLAN: the house faces west onto the Market Place and has a double-pile, rectangular plan with a small rear C20 extension to Western House.
EXTERIOR: Montpelier House has three storeys and seven window bays, under a pitched roof with stone coping to the gable parapets and internal gable-end stacks at both ends. There is a bracketed eaves cornice and platbands at first and second-floor level. Each window is surrounded by brick blocking, flush with the flint, and has a flint panel below, overall giving the impression of simplified flushwork. The central three bays are broken forward and defined by rusticated brick quoins, repeated on the outside angles of the facade. The C20 glass door in the central bay is set within a semi-circular porch on two fluted Roman Doric columns and pilasters with a Greek key meander in the frieze and a plain entablature. The fenestration consists of six-over-six pane horned sashes to the ground and first floors, and three-over-three pane horned sashes to the attic floor, all with gauged skewback arches, except for the ground-floor windows flanking the entrance which have rusticated voussoirs. The two ground and third-floor windows on the right-hand are without horns. A second doorway in the extreme right bay has a timber doorcase with consoles supporting a hood. On the left (north) gable end is a flat-roofed single-storey extension in the same building materials, fitted with a bowed plate-glass display window. The rear pile of the house is under a catslide roof.
INTERIOR: the main staircase has been removed but there is a secondary stick-baluster staircase to the south (in Western House), under which is re-used mid-C17 small-framed panelling. The first-floor centre room has a marble fire insert and an eared timber surround with acanthus decoration, an imbricated pulvinated frieze interrupted by shell ornament in high relief, and an eared overmantel with corner rosettes beneath a broken pediment containing a bust. There is large-framed wall panelling with meander decoration and a plaster cornice with dentils, egg-and-dart moulding and modillions. The window surrounds have reel and bobbin mouldings and acanthus carving.
