Maydencroft Manor

Maydencroft Manor

A large two-storey house on a moated site at St Ippolittts, comprising two long wings joined at right angles with a one-and-a-half-storey service wing extending to the north. The building represents a complex development spanning from the late medieval period through to the early 18th century.

The eastern wing was possibly originally built as a separate house in the 16th century. The late medieval open hall house, which survives in the eastern part of the north wing, was united with the eastern wing and its hall was floored over in the early 17th century (marked by 'EC/1615' carved on an oak pillar supporting the inserted floor). A further unheated block was added to the west of the hall later in the 17th century, with a kitchen subsequently added to the north wing. A gabled stair turret rises on the eastern side of the east wing, and an L-shaped lean-to service room occupies the north-east angle between the kitchen and hall. Some brick casing and interior features date from the early 18th century. The building underwent renovation in 1980–81.

The structure employs timber framing on red brick sills. The framing is exposed with plaster infill panels in the east wing and west gable of the north wing, while the first floor of the north wing is roughcast. The ground floor of the north wing and the lower buildings to its north are faced in red brick. Roofing is of steep old red tiles.

The north wing faces south; the east wing faces west with its entrance positioned near the junction between the two wings and a jettied gable at its south end. Fenestration is irregular. Windows include three-light 16th-century leaded casements (with one four-light example to the hall) and 19th-century casements, each of six lights, serving the jettied south end of the east wing. The north wing has three windows to each floor on its south front. The east wing displays four windows to the first floor and three to the ground floor; the leftmost ground-floor window is an early 17th-century four-light ovolo-moulded mullioned window, moved here from the kitchen wing during alterations. A battened oak door occupies an old hollow chamfered doorway with a four-centred head. A similar blocked door at the south end of this west front was noted during works in 1965. The front elevation shows four structural bays, with the entrance in the north bay and a stair projection to the rear.

The late 17th-century cut-string stair features barley-sugar twist balusters with panelled newels, all lit by a large nine-light mullioned and transomed window. The principal room to the south, measuring three bays, contains chamfered cross-beams supported by brackets on bay-posts and early 18th-century panelling with dado and cornice. A large open fireplace occupies the middle of the rear (east) wall, though indications suggest the south end bay may originally have been partitioned separately. A large projecting rear wall chimney of flint and clunch with two diagonal brick shafts serves this space; a bolection-moulded marble fire surround was added in the 20th century.

A similar large rear wall chimney on the north side of the hall in the eastern part of the north wing has three diagonal shafts and a four-centred fireplace now blocked on the first floor.

The medieval hall itself was a single bay with a narrow screens passage bay to the west, the whole forming a square plan beneath a smoke-blackened clasped-purlin roof. The east wall of the hall was removed and the room extended eastward with a stone floor and a Doric column dated 1615 positioned on the line of the former hall wall. The medieval bay contains convex curved tension braces, heavy jowled posts, and long curved braces tying to the tie-beam. The later western block employs an edge-halved scarf joint with bridled butts in its rear wallplate, and is heated by an added rear wall chimney.

The kitchen to the north, originally open to the roof, contains a large internal chimney with an oven to its rear and a lobby entrance from the west. Two gabled dormers rise at the eaves, and a four-light casement window serves the ground floor.