Listed Building record MDR13048 - Mansion House farmhouse, Lightwood Lane, Eckington

Like other sites in the Moss Valley, the farm complex at Lightwood may have originated as a single farm, followed by subdivision of the property on inheritance and also as smaller holdings became viable with the growth of income from the metal trades. The hamlet of Lightwood is first recorded in the late 13th century, and by the late 16th century Mansion House was a distinct property occupied by the Urton alias Steven family. A Steven inventory taken in 1630 shows a house with houseplace, kitchen, north parlour, new parlour and buttery and five chambers over, together with an iron house, smithy, stable, kiln house and other storage buildings; this description would fit Mansion House if one included the attic in the five chambers and allowed for a further cruck bay. An inventory of 1710 records a house of three rooms plus a buttery on the ground floor and three corresponding chambers on the upper floor. A measured survey was made of the farmhouse during renovation in 1980. It has a T-shaped plan, in part two-storied with attics, slate roofed and of stone construction. In 1980 there were indications of a further contiguous building off the north gable, in the form of a substantial part of a cruck blade embedded in the older masonry. The field immediately adjoining the north gable of the farmhouse is at a much higher level than the farmyard, so the footings of the remainder of the cruck building could survive below ground in this area. The larger of the two buildings forming the T-plan is of two storeys and attics, with mullioned windows on three sides. Its main entrance is through the smaller and lower building off its east side. It has a two-room plan on each floor; the southern room was apparently a parlour while the northern room, prior to the 1980 renovations, had served as a dairy and pantry. The two upstairs chambers are separated by an original stud and plank partition. In the chamber above the parlour, renovations revealed a wooden-framed window in the west wall, with no evidence of fixings for glass in leaded lights. Proof of the earlier existence of others could be seen in the infilling of their wider reveals on either side of the later stone-framed and mullioned replacements. A tight winder stair leads up to the attics from the north chamber. A date for the farmhouse in its present form is most likely to be about the middle of the 17th century. (1)