Building record 669/0/6 - Old Hall, Great Budworth

<1> Historic England, 2011, The National Heritage List for England, https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1139119 (Web Site). SCH6528.

House, C17, much altered. Plaster, pebbledash and brown brick; the plaster facing to the front is probably on an oak frame; clay tile roof. 2 storeys with projecting cross-gable left; right wing of 2 windows. Sandstone plinth to front; both wings at 1st floor and cross-gable at eaves level jettied to front - the jetties are convex and painted with quatrefoils. Mullioned and transomed windows to lower storey and mullioned windows to upper storey, each now with single-pane lights. Bargeboards. 2 brick chimneys, one of 3 flues, the other of 2 flues, have separated flues terminating in brick caps supported by a corbelled round arch above each flue. The interior has no visible features of special interest.

<2> University of Salford (Centre for Applied Archaeology), 2014, Heritage Assessment: Old Hall, No. 58 High Street, Great Budworth, West Cheshire & Chester, R4064 (Client Report). SCH8319.

An archaeological building assessment was undertaken in 2014 of the southern elevation of the Grade II Listed Old Hall, 58 High Street, Great Budworth, to assist the conservation and repair work of this elevation of the building.

The overall plan of Old Hall is a detached building with two timber-framed ranges at its core. The earlier plan-form appears to be a two-storey eastern house body with a western cross-wing (originally in the form of an open hall but later floored to form two floors). Both ranges are built in timber and both are jettied. The framing includes chevron infilling for the western wing and coving beneath the jettying in the eastern range. These two ranges sit on a sandstone plinth two courses deep. This earlier house was altered and extended to the north and west in the late nineteenth century with the addition of brick bays and brick ridge chimneys. Further additions were built in the early twenty first century to the rear (northern) elevation.

The southern elevation of the eastern range is two stories high, and rendered, except for the coving beneath the jettying to the first floor, and the exposed sandstone plinth. The rendering was removed as part of the current conservation and repair work on the building. This revealed that the southern elevation comprised a range of fabrics and identified four broad phases of construction/modification comprising: sixteenth/seventeenth century timber-framing; late seventeenth/early eighteenth century infilling; late nineteenth century insertions; and twentieth century rendering.

Sitting on top of the sandstone plinth was a ground floor timber wall-frame. Jettied above was a first floor timber wall-frame. The infilling of the panels to each wall-frame had been removed, although the two central upper panels in the first-floor wall-frame retained ogee diagonal bracing. The gap between the ogee bracing was originally filled with lathes and lime plaster, some of which remained. Elsewhere in the elevation the original infilling of the panels in both wall-frames had been replaced by hand-made brick, two inches deep, up to eight inches long and lime-mortared together. Four wooden casement windows, each with metal frames had been inserted into the ground floor (two) and the first floor (also two). A timber door surround had been inserted into the middle of the ground floor and this fronted by a timber porch, which gave the whole elevation some broad symmetry. It would appear that the elevation was rendered at the same time as the windows were inserted, and then re-rendered much later.