Historic Survey Max House Farm Max Mills Lane Winscombe North Somerset BS25 1DS

Historic Survey Max House Farm Max Mills Lane Winscombe North Somerset BS25 1DS Kirsten Elliott Historic Home Research 58 Minster Way Bath BA2 6RL October 2019 Contents 1. Introduction 2 2. Description of Building 3 3. Timeline and Probable History 6 Copyright 4. Conclusions 10 The documentation within this report may not be reproduced, Appendix 1: Maps 11 photo-copied, translated or transmitted in any way or for any reason, Appendix 2: Bibliography 15 except for the purposes of the relevant planning application, without the prior written permission of KIRSTEN ELLIOTT Historic Home Research [email protected] Tel: 01225 310364 1. Introduction This building has proved challenging to research for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is not a great deal of documentary evidence from the time when a house was first built on the site (circa 1813) until the 1880s, when the Ordnance Survey (OS) Map gives us a clear view of its layout at that time. Secondly, due to its increas- ingly dilapidated state, it was dangerous to go inside and take a close look, so it has been necessary to work from photographs and impressions gained from walking round the outside. Finally, the family which owned the building for the first 100 years of its existence had the surname Smith which threw up a myriad of pos- sibilities. Furthermore, like many families at that time, they used the same Christian names over and over again, so that I have found three William Smiths, and two, possibly three, Thomas Smiths, two of whom had a wife called Eliza. Finally, the evidence offered by the building is challenging, not least because it has been altered drastically in the twentieth century, and finally virtually gutted. The historical conclusions I have reached are, therefore, Above: view from the south based on circumstantial evidence, but they are the only ones Below: The collapsed staircase which seem to fit the facts. As previously mentioned, the building has undergone a great number of changes, some alterations clearly being unwise, since some walls are showing signs of falling outwards. The main staircase has collapsed and the cellar, one of two, according to an account from circa 1900, is open to the skies. At some stage, the roofing slates were removed and replaced with tile, and this seems to have hastened the ingress of damp. As will be seen, the eastern end has been altered, perhaps in the 1920s, and now has a very curious appearance, while old windows have been removed and Crittal windows substituted at the western end. The owners would like to demolish the building, rescuing as much material as possible, and rebuild sympathetically on the site. As will be demonstrated, this is almost certainly the best outcome, as it seems impossible to guess what form a restoration would take. 2. Description of the Building Max House Farm stands in a low-lying area to the west of Wins- combe. To the north is the Lox Yeo River while nearer, just north of its grounds, is a leat which fed into the mill pond at Maxmills. To the south is the Winscombe Brook. This runs through what was part of the land of Max House, and is now included in a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) called Max Bog. The brook runs at a slighter higher level than the land immediately to the south of the house. So it is unusually well-watered for the Mendip area and was probably prone to flooding. The house itself stands on what one of the clients has described as a level pad at the highest point of the ground. From a distance, the first impression is that this house would not look out of place in an Italian landscape, with the shallow pitch of the roof, the soft cream colour of the render and its small windows. However, all of these features suggest that the building ABOVE: The first view is Victorian rather than Georgian, although there are a few of the house. apparently Georgian features. At one time, the approach was via a carriageway which followed the line of the present southern LEFT: The brick inserts boundary before curving up to the eastern side of the house and in the coach house what must have been the main entrance. Today, the drive heads north wall. straight up towards the yard at the west side of the building. To the west of the yard is the walled garden. The wall, which BELOW: The build- has fallen down in places, is built of the rubble stone seen fre- ing in Banwell whose quently at Banwell,a type of sedimentary rock of varying colour. construction may This same stone is also used for the walls of what appears to have explain these inserts. been built as a coach house, though there are some strange features about this building. The back (north) wall has long brick infills, and what appears to be an added floor. However, a building just outside of Banwell, near the Banwell Caves, shows how this may have looked originally. (Banwell Caves and Tower are part of an early- to mid-19th-century folly garden created by Dr Law, Bishop of Bath and Wells on a Druidical theme.) This building too may have been a coach house, as it faces on to a courtyard, and appears to have a large doorway leading into it on the other side. The front (south) wall does not appear to tie into the main building, although the side wall to the east does. One solution is that the main house and coach house were in some way previously detached, but if the coach house - or part of it - existed before the house, as seems possible, this might account for the odd way in which the walls butt up against each other. On the north side of the coach house is a small lean-to, again clearly added, which again appears to have had to undergo some rebuilding. The pointed ‘Gothic’ style arches at various places in these walls are not dissimilar to those in various buildings at Banwell Caves. The Banwell coach-house mentioned above adjoins a cottage which was part of the follies. As will be seen in Section 3, Thomas Smith the younger was living in Banwell in 1841, and there are also links to another building in Banwell very close to where Smith was living which may have influenced the present building here at Max House. The western end of the main house is largely built of a very different kind of stone. This is a soft sedimentary stone, resembling an inferior form of lias. Probably, when covered with render, it is perfectly adequate as a building stone, but once the render comes off, as it has done here, it soon starts to erode. At the lower level, the windows have brick surrounds, which seems to be standard in this part of the world – they can be seen frequently in Ban- well – but above, Crittal windows have been inserted, with brick infill below them. Apart from those in the brick porch, which is very clearly twentieth century, the bricks appear to be handmade but probably date from after 1840 as they appear to be standard size. There is a decorative rainwater hopper – the only one left – which appears to be a Victorian cast-iron one of a fairly standard design. The oddest feature of this wall is that, at the top, there appears to be a pigeon loft. One of the clients who has ventured up into the roof space tells me that,as far as he can see, there is no access to the loft. A substantial amount of the render at this end has come off, particularly at first floor level, and there seem to be places where it has been patched and repaired in a variety of renders. Some may even be concrete, probably dating from about the 1950s. On the south side, there are two patches where the render has come off, and these patches reveal that the stone changes about halfway along from the friable lias-type stone to the darker, redder stone, traditionally used as building material in Banwell and Winscombe, and here in the coach-house and walled garden. Even with the naked eye, it is possible to see that this wall is leaning outwards. Photographs of the interior show the width of the gap. The east end of the building is curious. On the south side, there is a rectangular bay jutting forward, while at the north there is a segmental bay, while the entire wall containing the entrance is recessed between them. However, at the ceiling height of the first floor, the wall above the rectangular bay is carried across the whole front, jutting out above the entrance wall, but with the segmental bay projecting forward. The roof then projects forward again from all of this, supported by brackets at each end. Along each of the north and south sides the rafters are visible as a feature, and are closely set. The roof is in a poor state and the rafters do not appear strong enough to support the weight of the tiles. This looks suspiciously like an alteration circa 1930, with the original design now lost. Looking in from the former entrance, it is possible to see that there is an archway before the staircase. This appears to have been pushed through an earlier wall. There is a similar archway on the first floor. The house contains some features that appear late Geor- gian, such as the surrounds to the fireplace niches on the ground floor, and one fireplace, but, with their bullseye decoration, they date from 1820 or later rather than circa 1810 when the first house was built.

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