25049

 

II  

Designated  

19/03/2001  

19/03/2001  

Lade Farmhouse  

 

Monmouthshire  

Whitecastle  

Monmouth  

Skenfrith  

344123  

219368  

N  

Approximately 1.8km WSW of Skenfrith village, in an isolated position at the end of a long track running off the N side of the B4347.  

Domestic  

 

Included by Fox and Raglan in a list of houses of "the Regional Style", c.1550-1610; but perhaps later than that time-span suggests. Apparently re-modelled.  

A hall-and-crosswing house of 2 and 2½ storeys. Rubble walls now rendered and painted white; slate roof and red brick chimneys to the main range, corrugated sheet roof to the wing. The house has a shallow L-shaped plan consisting of a 2-unit main range on a N-S axis, on a site sloping down from S to N, with a receding wing added to the S end. The west facade of the main range has a small gabled porch offset to the right, approximately 1m from the junction with the wing and in line with the main chimney stack (suggesting a baffle-entry internal plan), and there is a small 2-light casement window immediately to the right (possibly a fire-window). To the left of the porch the ground floor has one rectangular 2-light casement midway between the porch and the N corner; the upper floor has a small 2-light casement to the left and a slightly larger 3-light casement to the right, both these windows immediately below a timber wallplate; and the front slope of the roof, which has a 45º pitch, has a small skylight window near the bottom of the slope, directly above the porch. There is a short square corniced chimney of C19 character on the ridge, and a smaller corniced chimney at the N gable. (Attached to the N gable wall there is now a large modern brick lean-to.) The gable of the wing at the S end, which is 2½-storeyed to a higher level, has 1 window on each floor, vertically aligned and of diminishing size: a 3-light casement at ground floor, a 2-light casement at 1st floor, and a small square window near the apex of the gable, with a damaged hoodmould and now boarded or shuttered. The roof has a 45º pitch. The right-hand return wall has 1 window on each floor of the front unit, that at ground floor with a wooden lintel and both with altered glazing. The rear gable has fenestration similar to the front gable, that to the attic with a complete hoodmould. The rear of the main range appears to have been remodelled and probably extended rearwards, the slope of the roof being both shallower in pitch and deeper than the front; and the openings are modern.  

Not inspected, but recorded by Fox and Raglan as an example of their "Type IIB", i.e. a two-room plan, with attic or semi-attic, with rubble walls, a winding stair beside the gable fireplace, and a stud-and-panel partition (Part II, Appendix 1: presumably applying to the main range described above); and an addition of two-room plan, with framed stairs (Part III, Appendix 1A: presumably the crosswing described above).  

Included as a traditional Monmouthshire farmhouse retaining vernacular character in layout and scale of detail.