Grafton Manor And Chapel Adjoining To South West

Grafton Manor and Chapel

A house, now operating as a restaurant and hotel, with an adjoining chapel. The manor dates from the early 16th century, with alterations and extensions around 1567. The building suffered partial destruction by fire in 1710, and was then partly rebuilt with interior remodelling carried out around 1860 by the architect David Brandon. The structure was restored in the late 20th century.

The manor is constructed of handmade brick with ashlar dressings and some stone facing on a sandstone base. The roofs are plain tiled and slate, with balustraded parapets to the front elevation and gable-end parapets in places. Massive external chimneys feature groups of star-shaped stacks and large single stacks. The building follows an L-plan, with a main two-span range aligned east to west, an upper parlour cross-wing at the east end separated by a prominent stone-faced porch wing, and a south wing at the west end. It rises two storeys with a basement to the north elevation and an attic with crow-stepped gabled dormers on the west side. There is a chamfered stone plinth, blue brick diaper patterning to the 16th-century brickwork, and a moulded stone eaves cornice to the front.

The south-east entrance front was largely rebuilt in the mid-19th century except for the porch and gable end of the cross-wing. Windows throughout feature ovolo-moulded stone mullions with transoms on the ground floor. The main range displays a four-light bay window, a three-light window and a single-light window on the ground floor, with two three-light windows and a single-light window on the first floor. The cross-wing gable end has a crow-stepped gable and a four-light mullioned basement window to the right of which is a reset stoup with a shell basin beneath a female figure set in front of a large swagged relief. Above the figure is a domed canopy.

The upper parlour window contains five lights with roll-moulded mullions and a fluted transom, surmounted by a frieze and pediment containing an animal relief, probably a Talbot dog. The frieze displays an inscription reading: "Plenti and grase ti in this plase whyle even man is plesed in his degre there is both pease and uniti. Salaman saith there is none acorde when even man would be a lorde". The attic of the gable contains a blind two-light window with a moulded cornice.

The porch wing is dated 1567 and has two storeys with a panelled parapet and corner finials with urn reliefs. It features a moulded round-headed archway with an impost string, flanked by coupled fluted Doric columns on pedestals supporting a triglyph frieze. Above the archway is the Talbot coat of arms with the date 1567 inscribed on the base. The upper floor has three fluted pilasters framing two mullioned and transomed windows and supporting an entablature with a scrolled Vitruvian relief on the frieze and a pediment inset into the parapet containing a roundel.

The east elevation of the south wing has five ground-floor windows and six first-floor windows. In the fourth bay is a round-arched entrance with a moulded keyblock, large tapered pilasters on pedestals with strapwork relief decoration, and half-glazed 20th-century double doors. The interior was remodelled around 1860. The upper parlour retains a large 16th-century plaster coat of arms above the fireplaces.

At the south end of the south wing, a small 16th-century single-bay wing of two storeys with a crow-stepped gable and 18th-century sash windows links the main building to the chapel.

The chapel dates from the early 15th century with early 18th-century, early and mid-19th-century alterations. It is constructed of dressed coursed sandstone rubble and sandstone ashlar with sandstone ashlar dressings, with a slate roof featuring gable-end parapets and a cross finial at the east end. The building forms a continuous nave and chancel of three bays with a west bell-turret and south porch, expressed in Perpendicular and Gothick styles. It has a continuous chamfered plinth and diagonal buttresses with offsets at the ends.

The windows were restored in the early 19th century and are all large with pointed heads: a four-light window at each end and three-light windows in the side elevations (one to the north, two to the south). The west bell-turret is gabled with a pair of pointed openings and one surviving bell. The south porch, added in the early 19th century, is square-planned with a roof concealed behind a prominent embattled parapet. It has diagonal corner buttresses, a pointed hollow-chamfered archway, and narrow cruciform openings in the side elevations, with a pointed-arched doorway within.

The interior displays Gothick styling throughout with plaster finishes. A barrel roof features a plaster quasi-vault with gilded bosses and panels painted with stars above the altar, probably replacing the original 15th-century roof destroyed in the 1710 fire. A blocked window to the north-east and a blocked north doorway are evident. The west gallery, dating from the early 19th century, is supported on a three-bay ogee-arched arcade with moulded slender posts of quatrefoil section and trompe l'oeil coats of arms painted in the spandrels. The gallery has traceried balustrading, and a dog-leg staircase in the south-west corner with a pointed-arched balustrade and wreathed and moulded handrail ascends to it. A doorway with a four-centred head in the north elevation leads into the south wing of Grafton Manor and to a mid-19th-century lean-to vestry and staircase.

Grafton Manor was the seat of the Talbot family, who later became Earls of Shrewsbury. The estate was granted to Sir Gilbert Talbot by Henry VII following the Battle of Bosworth and remained in the family for 400 years. John Talbot inherited the estate in 1555 and added the porch, the upper parlour, and laid out the grounds. It is probable that the rebuilt entrance elevations were refaced with stone at this time.