Held at:

Hereford Public Library

Reference:

Royal Commission on Historical Monuments: Herefordshire, Volume 1: H 936.244

Source:

Transcript of Original Publication

Title:

White House: architecture, construction and history

Place name:

St Margarets

Date:

Up to 1700

Description:

 

(2). WHITE HOUSE, house and barn, nearly 1 ¼ m. N.N.W. of the church. The House is of two storeys with attics. The walls are of plastered timber-framing and the roofs are covered with slates. It was built in the latter half of the 16th century, but the southern end was taken down early in the 19th century and a taller stone wing erected in its place. At the same time the N. and W. elevations were rebuilt in stone and the interior remodelled. The E. front has three gables with projecting barge-boards enriched with carved pattern of interlacing half-circles and supporting apex-posts with turned finials and pendants. On the ground floor are one six-light and two five-light transomed windows, the frames of which project in front of the general wall-face and have chamfered sills and moulded cappings. On the first floor are three similar five-light windows, and in the gables are one three-light and two four-light windows, the latter are low and without transoms. The first-floor windows have been reset as have probably also those on the ground floor. In the W. wall one old window of five transomed lights remains. Inside the building in most of the ceilings are plastered beams, but in the kitchen the beams are exposed and stop-chamfered. The doorway to the kitchen has some reused panelling on the reveals. A room on the first floor has an early 18th century fireplace with a bolection-moulded surround and cornice. The staircase (Plate 62) is original but has been reset; it has square newels surmounted by pierced and shaped finials, moulded and pierced splat-balusters and modern strings and hand rail. In the new wing is a reset overmantel with moulded base and dentilled and enriched cornice;  it is divided into two bays by panelled pilasters; in each bay fluted pilasters with moulded imposts support round arches with enriched archivolts  and foliated  spandrels; the panels have conventional ornament of vine and acorns, but each has since been covered by a painting of a bust of a man with landscape background and a globe in the sky. The panels are inscribed respectively “Tibi arrideo” and “Pro te fleo,” while below is the motto " Vanitas vanitatis." Standing loose in the study is a portion of a moulded panel-rail inscribed " Karka dy Ddiwedd 1574 " ; it is said to have come from St. Margarets church. Reset in the walls of the modern conservatory is a pair of stone lockers with moulded jambs and trefoiled heads, and probably of 13th-century date. The Barn, N.N.W. of the house, is timber-framed with wattled filling. It was built in the 17th century and is of seven bays divided into three compartments.

 

Condition—Good.

 

Plate 62

 

Observations:

Description documented c 1930 by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments

 

Ordnance Survey Map Reference and Index of Parish Properties

 


Top - Back

Ref: rs_stm_0122