No 2
No.2
No 2 -
This is a good looking house in a prominent central village position, next to the old goal and clock tower. It is clearly a 'designed' house rather than a modernised vernacular building like others in the street. The design has a Georgian influence, however, I don't know when it was actually built as several details baffle me slightly.
The cement surrounds to the windows and vertical corners of the front wall might suggest some alterations have taken place.
These cement 'quoins' were usually employed after some alterations where the edges of the stone work were untidy and best covered in this way. It is also possible that these cement surrounds were installed when the render was removed from the random stonework. Most random stonework was not designed to be exposed and would have initially been rendered.
The recent vogue for removing the render can be seen in several of the other buildings in Castle street (eg: nos. 3, 5, 7 and 9 roughly opposite No.2).
Photo from around-1900-1910
This one early photo (above) from pre-1910, shows the windows with the cement surrounds. However, there is another photo (below) which would seem to be later, where the surrounds are not there, and brick flat arch lintels are also visible!
(You can see which is the earlier photo by looking at the George Inn to the left, the earlier one has no tile hanging across the upper story, whereas the later one has the added tile hanging.)
So I am baffled by the apparent disappearance and then reappearance of the cement surrounds to the window. Perhaps when they were removed they then realised it was a mistake? Or am I missing something? (any suggestions, anyone?).
Image approx 1920? - (The chap with the ladder may be saying to the other gent: "Don't look now but there's a bloke behind you with a camera. If we keep still, people may still be seeing us standing here in over a hundred years time!")
One might have expected a house of this stature to have a slate roof. The current roof is of pantiles, which suggests the roof may have been amended at some time. The earlier photo looks as if the roof was still possibly slate (although the photo is of poor detail, so cannot be sure) this would suggest the change took place sometime during the 1900s.
Many houses would have been re-tiled to incorporate roof felt, which only began to be used, to give better weather insulation, in the mid 1900s. Pantiles are a looser fit than slates, so the under felt would have been more necessary.
The current low stone boundary wall, which surrounds the front of the property, was not originally there, the early 1900s photos show iron railings. Presumably these railings were given up to support the war effort!
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