Feeringbury Manor

Feeringbury Manor

House, dating from circa 1300 with alterations spanning the 15th to 20th centuries. The building is timber-framed, plastered, and roofed with handmade red plain tiles.

The structure comprises a 3-bay hall facing northeast, originally aisled, with a 16th-century stack to the rear of the middle bay. A 15th-century 3-bay crosswing extends to the right with 16th-century and 18th-century external stacks to the right, and a 19th-century external stack to the rear. A late 16th-century 3-bay crosswing extends further forwards to the left, with 16th-century and 19th-century external stacks to the left. An 18th to early 19th-century extension adjoins the left of the front bay, with further 18th and 19th-century extensions to the rear of the hall range. Other 19th-century extensions were demolished around 1960.

The building is two storeys. The ground floor features 4 casements of 19th to 20th-century date, one Gothic Revival casement with a 2-centred head and Y-tracery, and an early 19th-century splayed bay of sashes below the jetty of the right crosswing. The first floor has 2 casements of 19th to 20th-century date, 3 early 19th-century tripartite sashes, and one small fixed light with glazed margins. A 19th-century Gothic Revival door with a 2-centred head is set in a gabled porch with bargeboards. Plain brackets appear below the jetty of the right crosswing, and late 19th-century scrolled brackets sit below the eaves of the left crosswing.

In the right return, a French window cuts through the 16th-century stack, with an early 19th-century sash of 12 lights on the first floor. The left return also features a French window through the 16th-century stack, which displays an ovolo-moulded cornice and 3 octagonal shafts. The rear stack has 3 octagonal shafts, truncated. The right crosswing roof has a gablet hip to the rear.

The hall interior contains a late 16th-century inserted floor with chamfered beams and lamb's tongue stops. The aisles were removed in the 16th century and studding was inserted below the arcade plates. The roof retains some heavily smoke-blackened original rafters, mostly re-set in the 16th century with unsooted pegs; one rafter has an oblique trench for a passing-brace near the apex. The tiebeams are not morticed for crownposts.

The right crosswing contains a studded partition at both storeys between the middle and rear bays, an edge-halved and bridled scarf in the right wallplate, jowled posts, a cambered tiebeam, and a crownpost roof with gauging holes and axial braces. The front ground floor room has been extensively altered in Gothic Revival style, with a carved monogram E.R.C. (for E.R. Corder) and the date 1878 on a post to the left. Re-set in the front windows are 2 roundels of 16th-century glass: one inscribed E.R. with a crowned rose, and another inscribed R.H. with the arms of Heygate, for Sir Richard Heygate.

The left crosswing has on the upper storey a studded partition between the middle and rear bays, jowled posts, a cambered tiebeam, and a clasped purlin roof with arched wind-bracing. The absence of gauging holes in the rafters and the ovolo moulding of the stack indicate a construction date after 1575, probably not later than 1600.

The manor was held by the Abbot of Westminster from an unknown date, certainly by 1343, until the Dissolution. Henry VII granted it to his newly created Bishopric of Westminster in 1540. Under Edward VI the Bishopric was suppressed, and Feeringbury passed to the Bishop of London in 1550. The manor was held by the Quaker families of Corder and Catchpole from circa 1717.