The Manor House

The Manor House, Ware

A timber-framed house on Church Street in Ware, dating from the 17th century but incorporating earlier fabric. The building was substantially altered during the 18th and 19th centuries, and is now stuccoed with old tiled roofs, including a hip where the roof meets the north wing.

The house comprises an eight-bay north wing set at an obtuse angle to the street, connected to a short south-west range along the street frontages. Originally the main entry was from the gardens through a lobby, but this was replaced in the 19th century by a vestibule set in the re-entrant angle between the two wings.

Externally, the building displays two storeys with attics in the north wing. The south elevation facing Church Street has a first-floor mullion and transom casement window with six lights and lattice leaded glazing, while the ground floor features four paired cast-iron casement windows with glazing bars in a continuous run. The principal west elevation of the north wing, facing into the garden, has four first-floor sash windows with central bars dividing two large panes, three ground-floor sash windows with glazing bars, and two French casement windows with glazing divided into four panes. All windows have stucco architraves with keystones above the ground-floor examples, projecting stucco sills carried on brackets, and wood profiled blind box covers over the sashes. A central brick chimneystack with corbelled oversailing courses sits on the ridge, while two large shafted brick chimneystacks rise on the east face of the north wing.

The principal entrance is through a mid-19th-century conservatory with a glazed door whose glazing bars form four large panes, set in a surround with Tuscan pilasters, plain frieze, and moulded cornice. The conservatory has a hipped lead roof, with glazed roof wings. A single-storey red brick extension with Welsh slate roof adjoins to the left, behind a screen wall.

Internally, the house retains mid-19th-century plasterwork and fireplaces in the principal ground-floor rooms on either side of the central hall. The right-hand ground-floor room (Dining Room) has a heavy binder beam exposed at its centre. Substantial posts and beams are visible elsewhere, though these have been refinished in the mid-19th century, removing evidence of jowls and original mouldings. The hall contains a mid-19th-century open-well staircase with cut string and brackets, turned balusters, and wreathed moulded hardwood handrail. A mid-19th-century service stair stands at the junction of the wings.

The staircase hall features reset 17th-century panelling, also found in the first-floor study of the south-west wing. This study retains a reset mid-17th-century carved overmantel with tapered pilasters, Ionic capitals, fascia, and scrollwork frieze, with twin recessed panels bordered by egg-and-dart outer surrounds and scrollwork inner surrounds to inner fielded panels.

The roof structure contains significant evidence of earlier construction. The south-west wing roof incorporates halved and pegged smoke-blackened rafters of 15th-century origin, with notches indicating missing collars from what was originally a crown-post roof; some collars remain in situ, though no collar purlin survives. Two rafters of finely moulded timber without smoke-blackening are also present. The roof of the long north wing similarly employs halved and pegged rafters, clean without smoke-blackening. This structure is largely concealed by the 19th-century insertion of attics except near the eaves. The roof over the two northern bays was rebuilt in the mid-19th century using a trussed construction with two purlins.

Historically, the site of the Manor House is associated with the alien Benedictine Priory of Ware, which was suppressed by Henry V in 1414, after which ownership transferred to the Carthusian Priory at Sheen. The property subsequently passed to Trinity College, Cambridge, as part of Henry VIII's endowment in 1546. The Manor House is believed to have served as the Steward's house of the Rectory Manor. The building, together with its mid-19th-century landscaped forecourt and gateway leading from Church Street, forms a group with No. 8 Church Street to the west.