Pishiobury Park Mansion And Attached Offices And Garden Walls And Norman Gateway

Pishiobury Park Mansion and Attached Offices and Garden Walls and Norman Gateway

A brick courtyard house probably built between 1580 and 1590 for Sir Walter Mildmay. The building was altered internally and possibly refaced for Sir Thomas Hewitt in 1662, then substantially remodelled after a fire by James Wyatt in 1782-3 in Gothic Revival style for Jeremiah Milles. The offices date to the 18th and 19th centuries. Much interior detail was renewed around 1904, as evidenced by a dated rainwater head.

The exterior is of red brick with stucco details and a slate roof hidden behind a crenellated parapet. Early 16th and 17th-century brickwork survives in the faces of projecting corners. Elsewhere, fine jointed Flemish bond brickwork of around 1783 predominates. The house is square in plan, two and a half storeys high, with symmetrical five-window fronts to the west (entrance), north and east. The offices and walled garden are attached to the south, with two courtyards of outbuildings and a walled kitchen garden extending further south.

The west front follows the arrangement shown in an engraving of around 1700 in Chauncy's work, with projecting end bays inset from the angles. The ground floor sash windows have four-centred arched heads, those in the end bays set under a coved rubbed brick arch, all topped by moulded stucco labels. First floor and attic sash windows have stucco hood moulds. A central porch, stuccoed and crenellated, has a four-centred arch and door flanked by lancets.

The north front has broad outer bays divided by pilasters from a three-window centre. The windows follow the west front arrangement, but the ground floor outer windows have side lancets under the same arch as the front door. The east (garden) front has the same fenestration, but its three central bays are topped by a crenellated pediment.

The interior of the entrance hall contains late 16th-century small panelled oak panelling with scratch moulding. The Elizabethan square courtyard has been roofed over as a high central stair hall with a circular skylight in the coved ceiling. The upper part of the hall has a cornice and continuous unenclosed frieze, probably late 18th-century, of stucco medallions alternating between oval and rectangular forms, with husk swags. A cantilevered stair in two flights along the south and east walls rises to the first floor gallery, retaining Wyatt's wrought iron balustrade with honeysuckle medallions. The lower part of the hall was remodelled in the early 20th century with a neo-classical frieze and an exceptionally fine late 18th-century carved marble fire surround with dancing nymphs at the sides and a central cupid.

The central east room is the most important interior space, featuring full-height late 16th-century mitred oak panelling (said by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments to derive from the north room of the west front, as recorded in 1911). Larger panels between windows date to around 1662. The most significant internal feature is a late 16th-century stone chimneypiece with Ionic pilasters and a medallioned frieze, framed by oak fluted Ionic pilasters on pedestals supporting a strapwork ovolo cornice. Above this is a triple arched overmantle with fluted Corinthian colonnettes supporting consoles, frieze and cornice.

The main room on the north front ground floor is late 18th-century, with walls divided into large panels by raised reeded mouldings with paterae at the corners, and a marble fireplace carved with musical instruments. The north room of the west front no longer retains the 16th-century oak panelled dado noted by the Royal Commission in 1911, but it keeps a fine late 16th-century stone fire surround carved with grotesque animals and acanthus foliage, and an Elizabethan scratch-moulded oak door. A round-headed arch to the servants' stair has similar moulding to the porch, suggesting the stair may be by Wyatt.

Adjoining the house to the south are offices grouped around a small court or light well. On the west of this is a high single-storey kitchen lit by a central 18th-century window flanked by sunk panels; the lower part of the kitchen's west wall is in 17th-century brick. On the south-west is a late 18th-century brick octagonal food store with a slate roof and octagonal louvre. On the east of the court is a block of around 1783 with two windows and rubbed brick arches, extended upward and altered internally, probably in the 19th century. It is joined to the house by a diagonal single-window bay where the former sash window with a rubbed brick arch has been replaced by a French window.

Adjoining the south-east corner of the house is the walled garden, showing three periods of brickwork of roughly equal height: late 16th-century, mid-17th-century and late 18th-century. On the north side, the entrance is through the Norman Gateway, a stucco Norman Revival gateway of presumably mid-19th-century date, with shafts and scalloped capitals, chevron and diapered arches, and a Celtic interlace tympanum.

The grounds, lake and planting are said to be by Capability Brown. This is an historic brick Elizabethan courtyard house retaining some fine interior features, substantially remodelled by Wyatt in the restrained early phase of his Gothic work. The crenellated exterior presents an attractive combination of brick and stucco, with opening shapes and moulding profiles deployed in a way both varied and unified. It represents 18th-century Gothic Revival at its best.