Wootton Lodge

SK 04 SE 4/145

RAMSHORN CP WOOTTON PARK Wootton Lodge

10/1/53

GV I Country house. c1600 with later alterations and additions. Perhaps by Robert Smythson, for Sir Richard Fleetwood. Ashlar; nearly flat lead covered roof; ashlar stacks. Small late Elizabethan prodigy house.

Three storeys on basement with moulded eaves cornice to balustraded parapet and ashlar stacks, the lower parts of square section, the upper part moulded, squat, and of circular section, surmounted by slim crenellated shafts; five bay front with full-height three-sided angled bays to left and right, and central projecting porch bay, mullioned basement windows and mullioned and transomed upper windows with ovolo mouldings, the two canted bays have 2:3:2 vertical lights, the other windows have four vertical lights, those to ground floor have one transom, those to first and second floor have two transoms, hood moulds to all windows continued as strings; central round headed entrance arch approached by a sweeping flight of balustraded steps of c1700 and flanked by paired fluted Ionic columns to entablature which is surmounted by pared obelisks flanking the coat of arms of Sir Richard Fleetwood.

South front: three storeys; 1:3:1 bays, central recess with flanking arms, the right hand one has a three storey bow window with moulded cornice and balustraded parapet continued to each side, that to the left, together with the central recess has a plain coped parapet; mullioned and transomed windows with ovolo moulding, those to the right have two transoms and 3:4:3 vertical lights, the left have one transom and four vertical lights, those to the central recess have one transom and two vertical lights, hood moulds to all windows continued as strings.Sir Richard Fleetwood's coat of arms bears the red hand of Ulster and so Wootton Lodge cannot date from before 1612, the year in which James I gave baronets the right to bear it.

Wootton Lodge is one of a group of buildings of late C16/early C17 date associated with Robert Smythson which have half-basements usually containing the kitchen and offices and large mullioned and transomed windows dominating the elevation, e.g. Wollaton Hall, Nottingham (1580-88) and Hardwick Hall, Yorks.(1590-97). Some, like Wootton, are very high in relation to breadth. The nearest parallels are Barlborough in Derbyshire of 1584-85, Heath Hall in Yorkshire of 1585 and Gawthorpe in Lancashire of c1600-05; Burton Agnes in Yorkshire which also has the arrangement of three-sided bay window and a bow window paired at each corner was built by a cousin of Sir Richard Fleetwood and is connected with Robert Smythson by the presence of a plan of it amongst his drawings.

Listing NGR: SK0956343800