Bratton Court

Bratton Court
Bratton Court
	Location within Somerset
General information
Country	England
Coordinates	51°12′22″N3°30′35″W / 51.2060°N 3.5096°W Coordinates: 51°12′22″N3°30′35″W / 51.2060°N 3.5096°W
Completed	14th century

Last updated July 27, 2019

Bratton Court in the hamlet of Bratton within the parish of Minehead Without, Somerset, England was built as a manor house, with a 14th-century open hall and 15th-century solar hall. It is within the Exmoor National Park and has been designated as a Grade I listed building.^[1] It was enlarged in the 17th century and extensively altered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is now a farmhouse divided into 2 dwellings.^[1] The gatehouse and the barn at the west end of the courtyard date from the fifteenth century and are also listed as Grade I buildings.

A hamlet is a small human settlement. In different jurisdictions and geographies, hamlets may be the size of a town, village or parish, be considered a smaller settlement or subdivision or satellite entity to a larger settlement. The word and concept of a hamlet have roots in the Anglo-Norman settlement of England, where the old French hamlet came to apply to small human settlements. In British geography, a hamlet is considered smaller than a village and distinctly without a church.

Minehead Without is a civil parish in the English county of Somerset, and within the Exmoor National Park. As its name suggests, the parish covers a rural area to the west of, but not including, the small coastal town of Minehead. The parish's principal settlement is the hamlet of Bratton.

Somerset is a county in South West England which borders Gloucestershire and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east and Devon to the south-west. It is bounded to the north and west by the Severn Estuary and the Bristol Channel, its coastline facing southeastern Wales. Its traditional border with Gloucestershire is the River Avon. Somerset's county town is Taunton.

Architecture

Bratton Court was built as a manor house in the fourteenth century, when the open hall was constructed, and fifteenth century when the solar hall was added. Further additions were made in the seventeenth century and considerable alterations were made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has a T-shaped plan and is built of rubble stone, now rendered, with slate roofs, large stone chimney stack to the left of the entrance and a smaller one to the right. The main block is two storeys high with nineteenth century casement windows. It is a three cell unit with an open hall, with one bay to the left of the wooden entrance porch and two bays to the right. A cross passage is orientated north and south, and there is a solar wing to the east; this wing was at one time thought to have been the chapel but is now recognised as the solar. It has a featureless ground floor while the first floor has three pairs of jointed cruck trusses, one of which is fully arch braced. There is a chamfered pointed arched opening in the east gable wall, another opening to the left, and a chamfered lintel over the fireplace.^[2]

The solar was a room in many English and French medieval manor houses, great houses and castles, generally situated on an upper storey, designed as the family's private living and sleeping quarters. Within castles they are often called the 'Lords' and 'Ladies Chamber', or the 'Great Chamber'.

A cruck or crook frame is a curved timber, one of a pair, which supports the roof of a building, used particularly in England. This type of timber framing consists of long, generally naturally curved, timber members that lean inwards and form the ridge of the roof. These posts are then generally secured by a horizontal beam which then forms an "A" shape. Several of these "crooks" are constructed on the ground and then lifted into position. They are then joined together by either solid walls or cross beams which aid in preventing racking.

The stone mullion windows are irregularly arranged; some have trefoil heads with pierced spandrels showing a foliage design while others have cusped heads. On the rear of the building beside the archway is a single storey, slated roof extension with a chimney stack which houses a bread oven. The interior of the house has been much altered, but there is the remains of an aisle post near the entrance, forming the jam of a door-frame that once separated the servants quarters, and another, octagonal aisle post with splayed plinth and four curved braces at the south end of the house. The upper storey has seven pairs of arch braced collar beam trusses which are smoke-blackened in the roof space.^[2]

Mullion slender, vertical, usually nonstructural bar or pier forming a division between doors, screens, or lights of windows

A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid support to the glazing of the window. Its secondary purpose is to provide structural support to an arch or lintel above the window opening. Horizontal elements separating the head of a door from a window above are both a head jamb and horizontal mullion and are called "transoms".

Bratton Court was designated as a Grade I listed building on 22 May 1969. At the time of listing, the building was in use as a farmhouse and had been divided into two dwellings.^[2] The associated gatehouse and barn which abut the west end of the court date from the fifteenth century and are also designated as Grade I buildings.^[3]

A listed building, or listed structure, is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, Cadw in Wales, and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency in Northern Ireland.

In 2002 a planning application was submitted to convert the stables into a cafe, craft centre, smokery and offices.^[4]

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References

1 2 "Bratton Court". Images of England. English Heritage. Retrieved 2009-04-12.
1 2 3 "Bratton Court, Minehead Without". British Listed Buildings. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
↑ "Gatehouse and barn". Images of England. English Heritage. Retrieved 12 April 2009.
↑ "Letters relating to planning permission" (PDF). Exmoor National Park. Retrieved 20 September 2017.

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[IoE-1] 1 2 "Bratton Court". Images of England. English Heritage. Retrieved 2009-04-12.

[BLB-2] 1 2 3 "Bratton Court, Minehead Without". British Listed Buildings. Retrieved 1 September 2016.

[3] "Gatehouse and barn". Images of England. English Heritage. Retrieved 12 April 2009.

[4] "Letters relating to planning permission" (PDF). Exmoor National Park. Retrieved 20 September 2017.

Bratton Court

Contents

Architecture

See also

Related Research Articles

References