Building record 1880/0/1 - Bridgewater House

<1> English Heritage, 2005, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest, 55453 (Digital Archive). SCH4666.

House: late seventeenth century with early nineteenth century additions and alterations. Grey chip and rendered stone, Welsh slate roof and two brick chimneys. Originally a two-room gable-entry plan. two-storey, nearly symmetrical three-bay front. End bays have horned sixteen-pane sashes. Central bay has a wooden doorcase with moulded jambs and consoles, containing a six-panelled door.

Interior: Original entrance by a heck post and screen of a restored inglenook. Chamfered ceiling beams. Good oak dogleg staircase with twisted balusters, moulded handrail and square newels. Four-panelled grained nineteenth century doors.

The single-storey shop projecting from the right-hand side is not included in the item.

<2> Henderson Heritage, 2023, Heritage Impact Assessment: Bridgewater House, Great Barrow, R4706 (Client Report). SCH9471.

Heritage assessment produced in 2023 for Bridgewater House, Main Street, Great Barrow, which is Grade II Listed and located within Great Barrow Conservation Area.

Bridgewater House is depicted on the tithe map of the Township of Barrow c1839 and is located in Plot 545. It is recorded as owned and occupied by Samuel Hitchen and described as cottages and garden of an acre. The house is depicted as an L-shaped building to the east, with a linear building with projections to the west, assumed to be cottages, and evidenced on later Ordnance Survey maps. The latter have since disappeared and were replaced in the 20th century by Hitchens Row - bungalows and two storey semi-detached houses focused around a small, shared lawn.

At the time of the 1851 census, Samuel Hitchen, born 1798, was a wheelwright and lived with his wife, Elizabeth, daughter and two sons. In 1861 he lived there with his wife, daughter - a dressmaker, grandson, an apprentice wheelwright, and servant, with his eldest son living next door, also a wheelwright, with his wife and three children. In 1871, Samuel, described now as a retired carpenter, and his wife, both 73, lived with their daughter and granddaughter.

Bridgewater House was a domestic building with a shop. The shop was in the single storey shop annex to the north of the house, and the census indicates that in 1891 it was run by William Hitchen, a grocer, with his wife, son, and a domestic servant. The 1901 census records William, a shopkeeper, baker and grocer, his wife Susan, three children and a domestic servant. William is there at the time of the 1911 census, then aged 65, with wife, two sons, daughter; his son aged 21 was a grocer assistant. William’s daughter, Ava eventually ran the shop. It was described by Barrow Community History Group as Miss Hitchens shop, who was described with warmth as “ha’penny Ada”.

William had dug out a sandstone cellar under the shop at Bridgewater House and used it to keep produce such as butter and cheese cool. A separate cellar is under the east room with well-worn sandstone steps leading to it and accessed via a door in the hallway next to the dogleg staircase. This shows that the house is built on red sandstone bedrock. Recent investigative works demonstrate that the house is built of brick, and not stone as the listing of 1967 suggests. The house has been rendered in more recent times with a bell cast finish, and the red sandstone plinth remains evident.