Hello and thank you for being a DL contributor. We are changing the login scheme for contributors for simpler login and to better support using multiple devices. Please click here to update your account with a username and password.

Hello. Some features on this site require registration. Please click here to register for free.

Hello and thank you for registering. Please complete the process by verifying your email address. If you can't find the email you can resend it here.

Hello. Some features on this site require a subscription. Please click here to get full access and no ads for $1.99 or less per month.

Tasteful friends: 14th Century stone house in Somerset, UK

What say you, my fellow DLers? It's charming and it has some VERY impressive period features, but it remains both cozy and quaint. What do you think about the modern features? Have they been tastefully done?

I wait all your comments with bated breath :)

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 15June 5, 2022 12:02 AM

The view from the bottom of the garden is just delightful.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 1June 4, 2022 1:01 PM

They took out most of the original ceiling beams, and I'm angry about it.

by Anonymousreply 2June 4, 2022 1:09 PM

Yes, please, Miss OP.

Oh those views! I’d do some repainting and get rid of that frauy window treatment but I love the house.

by Anonymousreply 3June 4, 2022 1:25 PM

I mostly love it, OP. Somerset, WIltshire, Dorset, these near West Country counties appeal especially to me and the exterior of the house and its garden setting are pretty wonderful. It's a curious mix of a house as you'd expect for one with origins in the 14thC; obviously there was a lot of work done in the 19thC and 20thC, and likely earlier, modernizing the ceilings about which R2 is mad (early 19thC or late 18thC from the looks of it.) With a house that old and with layers of alterations over centuries it's often best to embrace what one has rather than fight it too much trying to make everything of one period.

It's a really lovely and comfortable house that's flexible to using the rooms for various purposes, it has the one quite large room on the first floor with the grand windows to lend variety to what are otherwise relatively small rooms. I would certainly be tempted to spend the great majority of time in this big space with its many separate areas, window seats, and other features.

Despite the impressive exterior, it's not a huge house inside, just 3400 square feet – not small, obviously, but the exterior does suggest something altogether bigger in size. It's manageable inside and outside at 9/10 of an acre. The two separate buildings could function as a rental and a small guest house, or some combination: small enough that you could let them them sit there little used, or put them into service, even as income properties, without making a full-time job of it and while maintaining some privacy in the process.

The rooms are all rather pleasant or better. The current furnishings and fitted carpets and some finishes are something of a let down, but of course the furnishings leave with the owners. It's a house that needs a certain amount of period furniture to tie things together, but you could certainly mix in modern furniture and art. The kitchen is rather nice, maybe the modern cabinetry is a bit dated and I would paint it, but it's not a house where there needs a massive plan to furnish it or to change the finishes to taste.

The house is just outside the village of Freshford, with some pubs and everyday needs, Bath is just 20 minutes by car (and from there 80 minutes to central London by train.)

I'm not sure that it's the house I would pick at that price as there are other early houses that suit my taste more and cost less, but it's a great house.

by Anonymousreply 4June 4, 2022 3:19 PM

Gorgeous house, I love it. Similarly the one below from the same era is also amazing

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 5June 4, 2022 3:46 PM

Stunning house but some details left from the specifics which are the downfall of many listed properties- heating and glazing. The radiators in pic 5 are really big-that's a bad sign, especially as there's a fireplace in that room too. Wonder how much of the glazing is single. The realities of these really old houses is they're beautiful to look at but cold to live in.

by Anonymousreply 6June 4, 2022 4:00 PM

Love the outside - the inside is a little meh. Blond wood floors seem inappropriate - but that’s just me.

by Anonymousreply 7June 4, 2022 4:02 PM

Are there ghosts? That would be a huge plus for me!

by Anonymousreply 8June 4, 2022 4:06 PM

I prefer the West Sussex one. The circular staircases in Somerset are difficult both for stairs and people.

by Anonymousreply 9June 4, 2022 4:08 PM

[quote]Stunning house but some details left from the specifics which are the downfall of many listed properties- heating and glazing. The radiators in pic 5 are really big-that's a bad sign, especially as there's a fireplace in that room too. Wonder how much of the glazing is single. The realities of these really old houses is they're beautiful to look at but cold to live in.

I'm sure all the windows are single-glazed, and it certainly looks so. It's very difficult to replace historic windows with double-glazing because without exception it looks wrong and you're scraping original parts of the building for replacement parts. A Grade II listing means that changes affecting the exterior appearance and materials require approval (Grade II* and Grade I buildings require oversight of most any change beyond routine maintenance, painting, etc.; and some listings are, for example, Grade II* with an inventory of protected resources, say a former great hall with 16thC decorative plaster ceiling and an elaborate wood chimneypiece.)

The solution is simple: indoor mounted glass or plexiglass panels that clip on and provide the equivalent to double glazing with much lower cost and no loss to original or early elements (these look 19thC/early 20hC mostly) of the building and no change to the exterior appearance. Pop them on when it turns cold, and take them off when the weather warms. The other solution is lifestyle, reflecting that English houses are cold by comparison to U.S. houses. The average indoor winter temperature for U.K. houses is 59F, as compared to 68F in the U.S., 50F in Japan, and 77F in Russia. In the U.K. and Europe it is more common to heat and cool rooms according to use whereas the U.S. tends to heat/cool a whole house or large zones of it. The main house is only 3400 square feet, but people with large houses in the U.K. tend to heat their spaces rather selectively and home energy costs are a popular topic of conversation.

The radiators in the photos have some age to them, 1930s-1960s in photo 5, late Victorian in the kitchen and dining room, for instance. They are cast iron and produce great heat but to do so they have to be big (more modern ones are lighter metal and use the same system of massed pipes but flattened out at the extremities as fins to distribute the heat to the room more effectively and quickly.) When these radiators were installed, there were probably only one or two zones in the houses, though you could turn the valve off in one room and the steam or hot water would advance to the next in sequence. They might have been stoked quite hot in the 1880s, 1890s, but after the two world wars not; more likely they were to keep the rooms something above freezing, enough to take the chill from the air and not much more. Fireplaces would have been supplemental, spot heating for rooms in use by family members just as in earlier generations most large houses had a schedule of fires. The thermostat of course is never in the right space: near a frequently used fireplace and it will shut down the rest of the system, in the cold as a witch's tit drafty hallway it will run constantly. The size of the house is reasonable enough to adjust the existing system of radiators into sensible zones and then to add temperature adjustments to each room within a zone -- fairly simple given what's there and the strong likelihood that it works like the day the radiators were new.

It would be crazy to have all of the radiators chugging away AND to have a fire in every room as a regular practice. The radiators were not added to replace the fireplaces but to lessen their necessity for use.

by Anonymousreply 10June 4, 2022 6:24 PM

Interesting. I've rarely seen a house where I find so much to love and to hate at the same time. I love the former kitchen/ now family dining room, and I love that first bedroom (pic 14) with the exposed beams, but I hate that awful TV screen in the room.

I hate that they seem to have sealed up all the fireplaces -- even if you don't use them much, just knowing you could have a fire is such a nice feeling. I hate that they seem to have stripped all the original character out of many of the rooms (like in pic 3), but I love the gardens and even the summer house, inauthentic as it may be with its pizza oven.

Has the place been run as a BnB (or an Airbnb) for the past 20 years?

by Anonymousreply 11June 4, 2022 9:39 PM

Was this filmed in one of those bedrooms?

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 12June 4, 2022 9:50 PM

Adjusted for inflation that house cost $1.78 brand new

by Anonymousreply 13June 4, 2022 9:58 PM

One can never have too many kitchens

by Anonymousreply 14June 4, 2022 10:19 PM

I like the house but like the one R5 much better and it's more practical and has water views. Kept wondering how to get up to the loft with the chairs until I noticed the ladder hung on the wall. Too bad they had to use angle metal to support the ceiling.

by Anonymousreply 15June 5, 2022 12:02 AM
Loading
Need more help? Click Here.

Yes indeed, we too use "cookies." Take a look at our privacy/terms or if you just want to see the damn site without all this bureaucratic nonsense, click ACCEPT. Otherwise, you'll just have to find some other site for your pointless bitchery needs.

×

Become a contributor - post when you want with no ads!