Manor Cottage The Old Manor House

House on Stocks Road, Aldbury, now divided into two dwellings (The Old Manor House and Manor Cottage). Despite its name, this was never a manor house. Built circa 1500, probably for Henry Winch or the Russell family, with the date '1516' inscribed in the spandrel of the hall fireplace. A significant survival of an open hall house of unusual form.

The building was substantially altered in the mid-17th century (before 1663, when Bennet Winch, whose initials appear on the main chimney stack, was assessed for five hearths). Two storeys and floors were inserted into the hall and kitchen. A large projecting south chimney was added in the early 18th century. By 1722 the property was described as a house with two cottages attached.

The structure comprises an irregular L-shaped building of two storeys facing east over the village pond. It combines timber framing on a red brick sill with red brick infill, plastered in the central bays of the first floor front. The ground floor and south wall of the rear wing have red brick casing. Steep old red tile roofs cover the structure.

The main composition is unusual: a deep single hall bay with a jettied parlour bay to the north, followed by a 17th-century jettied extension with lean-to and outshut. A higher gabled south crosswing contains a wide entrance door into the former crosspassage below the jettied first floor, with the hall entrance beyond the massive chimney stack. A lower two-storey rear wing comprises a two-bay kitchen (formerly open to the roof) with a storeyed west end bay providing cook's quarters above storage.

The east front has four windows. The first floor displays flush cast-iron lattice casements, one to each bay defined by exposed timber framing. The close-studded jettied first floor of the parlour bay sits in the same plane as the front of the close-studded hall bay (its lower part faced in brick)—a most unusual feature confirmed as original by the framing. The north extension has wide-spaced studs in its higher jetty; the first floor of the south crosswing similarly uses wide-spaced studs, though its gable triangle above is close-studded. Ground floor fenestration includes tall two-light small-paned casement windows to individual bays, flanked by high three-light ovolo-moulded leaded windows to the parlour, with leaded glazing to the right of the plank door serving the north extension (No. 13).

The south crosswing features a fine hollow-chamfered four-centred wide doorway with sunk spandrels and an old battened oak door with iron hinges. Its south side displays exposed first floor framing with wide-spaced studs and curved tension braces set low to allow small corner windows. The seventeenth-century header-bond brickwork to the ground floor west of the chimney contrasts with eighteenth-century brick featuring blue headers and Flemish bond to its east. The lower west range employs red brick chequered with blue headers, a floor band, and segmental arches to three flush two-light casement windows per floor—leaded above, cast-iron lattices below.

Interior features include a narrowed rear door to the crosspassage with no structural division of the south service bay, and the original south stair. A chamfered doorway leads to the hall, which retains an axial chamfered and stopped beam inserted in the floor. The wide fireplace has a depressed four-centred stone arch with a date inscribed on its east spandrel. The north wall displays irregular studding. The parlour retains fine seventeenth-century oak mitred panelling with arcaded panels over the fireplace and an ovolo-moulded north fireplace (its stack formerly projected externally). An early seventeenth-century stair turret replaced an original stair on the west wall. The chamber over the parlour was formerly plastered under the collars, and the hall roof shows little smoke-blackening. A fireplace in the chamber over the hall is scratched with 'James Partridge 174?'.

The rear wing preserves a smoke-blackened clasped-purlin roof of two bays, with a third western bay whose floor sits lower than the inserted kitchen floor above. This inserted floor features a chamfered cross-beam and an elaborate hollow double stop with nick. A plain small square flue to the kitchen fireplace likely replaced an original on the north wall. The chamber over the south crosswing has a four-centred fireplace with sunk spandrels and a three-light diamond-mullioned south window.

The Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England regarded this as a highly unusual house which may represent an hitherto unrecognised type.