Parish House

At the heart of Baltonsborough village

This is a rare example of a church house that has remained in the ownership and use of the parish. We were brought in to preserve this link and to take on its care. Built in about 1500, on the edge of the churchyard, it has long served the village of Baltonsborough for meetings and festivals, both formal and convivial.

Arched trusses rise overhead

We improved the parish meeting room on the ground floor, which still has its great hearth across one end. Above, in the part you can stay in, was a long room with an open arch-braced roof. The Tudor churchwardens exercised great economy in their building works and no timber is heavier than it need be. When this floor was later fitted out for a tenant, similar frugality ensured that the alterations were minimal and undamaging. The long room was divided by an oak partition, which we have kept, but the graceful arched trusses still rise over your head on each side of it. The inside is a sampler of the carpenters’ art, where modern craftsmen have carefully repaired ancient work. There is a fine view of the church from the windows of the main rooms.

In May 1989 the Landmark Trust received a letter from the Rev. B.H. Adams, Vicar of Butleigh, a neighbouring parish run together with Baltonsborough, asking for help. He said that the Baltonsborough church house had for a long time been occupied by a verger, but he had died and the house needed so much spent on it that the church could not afford it and would have to sell. What worried him was that the ground floor room was used as a church room and he would like to keep it. Would the Landmark Trust be prepared to buy the house, and let the parish keep the ground floor room?

The Landmark Trust was interested in such an historic little building and realised how important it was that its original use should continue. The arrangement was agreed and the Landmark Trust bought the freehold.

By great good luck the next-door cottage, Church View, came up for sale at the same time and the Landmark Trust bought that too. About a third of the original church room, which was the main room on the first floor, extended into it and during the restoration that part was taken back into the Parish House. When it was repaired Church View was re-sold with covenants.

Work started in 1993 with the Landmark Trust’s own craftsmen repairing the roof. It was furnished and ready for visitors in September 1995.

They and the wall plates were cut about especially where the dormers were inserted and in those areas, as you can see, there is new work and a new wall plate on the south side.

The Landmark Trust by this time had bought Church View and it was possible to extend the first floor of Parish House into it, taking down the wall between the two and rebuilding it further west, so that all the trusses except for the one that was pulled down when the old church house became two cottages, are now in the Parish House. On the ground floor the party wall remained where it was before. The partitions and passages which had accumulated during its life as a cottage were removed except for one original 17th-century wooden screen on the first floor, found within later plaster-work. It was repaired and now divides the sitting room from the main bedroom.

Steel tie-rods were inserted in several places where the walls showed signs of leaning outwards.

No access was now needed between the new ground floor parish room and the Landmark part of the building, so the staircase was removed and re-built in a straight and simple form in the north wing. At the top of the old staircase there had been three different levels, now there is one. The door between the new parish room and the north wing lean-to was blocked up.

The first floor in the north wing was uncomfortably low so the level of the first floor was slightly altered. A new front door for the Landmark part of the house was inserted. On either side of the door in the kitchen is a limestone shelf that was probably used for maturing cheeses.

Fairly extensive general repairs were needed: the house was re-roofed, using all the old 'double Roman' tiles that were sound; the window-frames were rotten and had to be renewed. One window, in the north side of the main bedroom was given a mullion window, like those that were there originally, the others are like the 18th-century windows that replaced the mullions, but they have leaded lights. New oak floors were laid in the first floor rooms, and the house was re-wired. The wirescape that festooned the front of the house was removed and the wires run underground.

A plaque by the front door saying the house was built circa 1539 by Richard Whiting last abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was removed as inaccurate. The Parish House was almost certainly built before 1539 and was not built by any abbot, but by the parishioners of Baltonsborough.

Much thought was given as to how the rooms should be used. At one time the kitchen was going to be next door to the sitting room, with both bedrooms in the wing. but in the end a ground floor kitchen with direct access to a sheltered sitting out area seemed obviously right.

Outside, a carpark was made and Church View was given a garden separate from the Parish House. On the south front the low stone wall was removed and a path of stone flags laid.