Swan House appears in the land tax assessment of 1787 as 'The Swan', where the proprietor was the Widow Hodges.  In 1789 William Hodges was the owner and by 1809 the title had passed to Sarah Hodges.  Three Hodges had been recorded in 1665 as paying hearth tax in the parish – both Eliza Hodges and Richard Hodges had one hearth, and Thomas Hodges two.  It is not possible to say which, or indeed if any, of these was the occupier of Swan House.

In 1823 the Land Tax assessment has the entry for the proprietor -‘Edward Thomas Foley esq – late Hodges’, Foley having acquired Swan House since the previous year’s assessment.  The Foleys owned the property until Ellen Joyner purchased it in 1919.

In 1792 Thomas Pritchard was the occupier of The Swan.  Thomas Beavan followed him in 1793, and was still there in 1797.  The occupant between 1801 and 1803 was the proprietor, William Hodges.  An entry in the assessments for 1804 lists Richard Smith as the occupier and in 1807, Richard Nutt.  Richard Nutt remained until 1815 and was replaced as occupant by William Nutt who is entered for the years 1816 and 1817.

A longer term of tenancy began with John Taylor in 1818.  He was still the occupier in 1823 but in 1824 he was replaced by Anne Taylor.  It seems at least possible that the family was involved in the butchery trade from the first.  Anne, at any rate, was described as a butcher in 1831 when she is recorded as living at The Swan with B Taylor, J Taylor and another Anne Taylor.

It seems likely that the B Taylor of 1831 was Bennett Taylor, who was Foley’s tenant at Swan House at the time of the tithe apportionment in 1838.  In the 1841 census Bennett Taylor, a 41-year-old butcher, occupied The Swan, together with eight-year-old Anne Taylor and Elizabeth, a servant of 28 years of age.  By 1851 Bennett seems to have prospered for in the census of that year he is described as a ‘farmer of 70 acres employing 3 labourers’.  He was now 51 years old and was recorded at The Swan with Mary Taylor, his wife, and also 51.  For some reason Taylor preferred the name Benjamin, and it is as Benjamin Taylor, farmer, that he appears in the local directories for 1851 and 1857.

The 1861 census records Isaac Williams at The Swan.  Isaac, like his predecessors, was also a butcher.  The entry records that he was 41 years old and that his wife Elizabeth was 43.  A two-week-old daughter was also called Elizabeth.  Other occupants were Anne Mathews, a 13-year-old servant girl and William Williams, a 14-year-old apprentice who may have been a family member.

Isaac is still recorded as the butcher at The Swan in the 1871 census, but he had acquired a new wife, Susanne, a woman of 41.  His daughter, the younger Elizabeth was now 10 years old.

A change of use was imminent, for in 1881, Swan House, was occupied by the Jones family.  John Jones was a shoemaker and shopkeeper, aged 36.  His wife Jane was 34, and they had four children – Ellen, 10; Annie, 8; William, 5, and 2-year-old Ada.  All the children had been born in Tarrington apart from William, who had been born in neighbouring Stoke Edith.  However the 1891 census records that by that year John Jones was describing himself as a farmer and that he was helped on the farm by his son William, now 15.

In 1919 Mrs Ellen Joyner the tenant of Swan House, purchased Swan House from the Foleys.  The property is described on the conveyance as ‘All that messuage or dwelling house known as Swan House, with the Cart Shed, Cowhouses, Stables and Wainhouse thereto belonging together with all those three pieces of orcharding and grass land containing by admeasurement Five acres One rood and Eleven perches or thereabouts as the same are now in the occupation of the Purchaser as Tenant.’ 

Ellen Joyner was married to a Charles Frederick Joyner and the indenture specifies that the property is for her ‘to hold the same unto and to the use of the Purchaser in fee simple as her separate estate free from the debts or control of the said Charles Frederick Joyner’.  Mrs Joyner had been listed as a farmer in Tarrington in 1913 and was still listed as such in 1929. 

In 1934 Mrs Elizabeth Smith was a shopkeeper at Swan House and in 1941 she was listed more specifically as a baker and shopkeeper.  In 1934 Mrs Elizabeth Smith was a shopkeeper at Swan House and in 1941 she is listed more specifically a baker and shopkeeper.  Her son, Dudley Smith, was 22 years old when the family moved into Swan House.  He recalled that there was a large baking oven in the kitchen where the bread was baked.  His father carried the loaves around the village in a basket.  This grew into a larger business which involved two other sons, Geoff and Percy, and another shop was opened at Drury Cottage which sold sweets.  Dudley Smith died in 2001, aged 90.

The Building

The west elevation of Swan House

Swan House is listed as Grade II and is assumed to have been built in the late 17^th or early 18^th century.  It was re-modelled and extended in the late 18^th or early 19^th century.  

Swan House is L-shaped and of two storeys with a basement.  There is a later lean-to attached to the northern elevation and an outhouse containing the bathroom, which is joined to the main house by a covered passageway.  There are two rooms plus a kitchen and pantry on the ground floor, and four bedrooms.  There is visible evidence both internally and externally for the re-modelling which was carried out to the house.

The external walls of the main house are of rubble stone but they have been heavily painted or whitewashed over.  The extensions were built in brick and stone.

The west elevation of the property faces the main road, while the main entrance to the house is at the rear.

The house has a hipped clay-tiled roof with king post trusses.  The single pegged struts which generate off the principals are then nailed to the tie beams.  The trusses contain a single tier of purlins, trenched into the principals.  There are three chimney stacks.

The West Porch of Swan House

The house as it stands today has many characteristics of a typical late 18^th or early 19^th century building, for example the hipped roof.  However the 1952 listing suggests that there may have been an earlier rectangular building which was built in the 17^th century and re-modelled and extended in the early 19^th century.

There are no other 17^th century stone houses in the neighbourhood and the 1930s   RCHM notes refer to the possibility that the original house was a rectangular timber-framed building on a stone base. 

The first mention of Swan House is in 1787 when the Widow Hodges inhabited it, although, as mentioned above, there were Hodges in the parish in 1665.  The suspicion that an earlier, rectangular-shaped timber-framed house stood on the site in the 17^th century comes from a number of architectural details.

One of these is the window in the pantry on the ground floor.  On the west elevation, internal face, at the point where an east-west running wall cuts halfway through this window, the wall has been shaved back at an angle to allow full light to enter the pantry.  However, if this wall were original it would seem logical to have placed the window slightly to the north or to the south so that the whole of the window would be in one room.  It is also a possibility that this window may have simply been erroneously built. 

The doorway in the basement has strap hinges on the door that are of a 17^th century type.  This does not, however, necessarily mean that the door is an original feature of the house as it may have been re-used.

There are some re-used timbers in the basement.  The first is the east ceiling beam which has a run of peg holes (now disused) and is of dubious length where the corbel was added to help it span the width of the basement.  The second side-turned timber over the basement door has two pegged slip mortices.  If, however, there was an original timber-framed house there seems to be little evidence of re-use.  The timbers could have come from elsewhere and as yet none can be dated.

The east wall of the house, which includes the main stack and the northern cross-wall containing the stairs, has a stone plinth but it is not seen to follow through to any other elevations.  The rubble coursed stonework, however, and the use of whitewash on the external faces and plasterwork on the internal walls may have hindered the identification of construction breaks.

So, although the RCHM notes claim that Swan House was built as a rectangular-timber-framed building in the late 17^th - early 18^th century, this cannot be verified other than by a full survey.

The Stratigraphy

There were three areas of excavation.  The first two trenches (A and B) were excavated ahead of building construction while the third area (trench C) was excavated for use as a storage area for building materials.

During the clearance of the garden a large amount of re-used worked stone was found.  It seems probable that a number of these architectural fragments came from the nearby church of St Philip and St James, which was re-modelled in the 19^th century.  In particular a pair of springers from the base of an arch may have originally formed part of the earliest phase of the church fabric.  These stones will remain in-situ and are available for further study.  A photographic record of a number of architectural fragments was made and has been included with the site archive.

Conclusions

Swan House occupies a significant position at junction of several roads.  It is reasonable to expect that an earlier building stood here.  Medieval house platforms are recorded in the orchard immediately to the east and medieval pottery has been found in the area, although none was found during this field project.

The possibility that Swan House was a public house in the 18^th century cannot be ignored.  The 1787 land tax reference to 'The Swan' certainly seems to suggest that this was the case.  It is not likely, however, that such a use would leave any structural evidence.  In 1869, the adjacent parish of Stoke Edith was totally without a public house, as were some other Herefordshire parishes - Bartestree, Dormington, Edvin Loach, Kenchester, Laysters, Rochford, Tedstone Delamere, Tedstone Wafer and Westhide. (This is from an article quoting from a teetotal publication which listed parishes without pubs in a number of English Counties in the Hereford Times, January 23^rd 1869.  The paper adds - 'It is but fair to remark, however, that those counties which contain the largest number of parishes free from public houses are cider counties, in which the agricultural labourer receives from the farm his customary quantity of cider.')

The only feature that may relate to an earlier phase of occupation of the site was found in trench A during the excavation of the footings for the new garage.  The timber beam that was observed in-situ could possibly be the sill beam of an earlier timber-framed building.  It was not possible to identify any cut in the section of the trench for the insertion of this beam, and no dating evidence was found. 

Reporting

Unpublished Report - Swan House, Tarrington, Herefordshire: archaeological building recording and monitoring, Huw Sherlock and P J Pikes, 2001. Clem

This report is available at the Archaeological Data Service site

To view or download the report click here

A copy of this report is held in the reference section of Hereford City Library

Lovell