Building record BUR 050 - The Old Rectory, Mellis Road

The Old Rectory at Burgate is a substantial late-Georgian house of red-brick and slate built in or shortly before 1827 when it was described as ‘new erected’ in a terrier of parish property, and the old Rectory 250 metres to the south was demoted to a farmhouse. At first sight the house seems largely original, but was fact extensively remodelled and extended in several phases between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. It was initially entered from the south by a large portico which opened onto a passage between the present kitchen and sitting room, with a staircase rising from the back of the same passage in the opposite direction to that of today. The house was probably designed only for a curate, but was subsequently occupied by locally important figure who served as both Rector and Justice of the Peace and considerably aggrandized the southern façade by adding two bowed projections. The easternmost ‘bow’ is simply the false façade of a small lean-to and represents a remarkable Victorian folly of considerable historic interest. Among other changes the original front door was blocked, the staircase turned, and a new thoroughfare inserted with a northern entrance at the foot of the stair in order to avoid the kitchen. At the end of the 19th century a later incumbent added a large corrugated iron extension to the western gable, but this was removed during the 20th century and the original entrance passage was reinstated (S1).