St Michael'S Manor House

St Michael's Manor House, now a hotel, is a late 17th-century brick house that has undergone significant alterations in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The north front, facing the street, is two storeys and an attic, with nine windows. The outer two windows on each floor at either end are blocked. It features a very high-pitched, hipped tiled roof with three dormers and a deep, coved eaves cornice. A small pediment sits over a slightly projecting, one-bay, central section. The brickwork incorporates a string at first-floor level, a brick plinth with moulded coping, and rusticated stone quoins. The windows are recessed sash windows with glazing bars, typical of the later 18th century.

The west front, the main entrance front, was altered in the late 18th or early 19th century and presents two storeys and an attic with five windows, roughcast in appearance and with a parapet. It also features rusticated stone quoins. The recessed sash windows have glazing bars in plain reveals, with a single light on the ground floor except for the centre first-floor window, which is five-light and set under a round arch with a stuccoed tympanum. A central, Doric, prostyle porch with two pairs of columns, a triglyph frieze and mutule cornice, is now glazed.

The south front, overlooking the garden, is two storeys and an attic, with four windows. A large, projecting, full-height round bay of red brick dominates the right side. The hipped and rounded roof over the bay has three round-headed dormers. A window on the left-hand side of the first floor is a three-light sash under a round arch with a stuccoed tympanum; while the ground-floor window beneath is a later, square bay with French doors. The right-hand first-floor windows are long casements that open onto a cast iron balcony; the ground-floor windows are full-length sashes with glazing bars, all set under gauged, shallow segmental brick arches. A two-bay section is set back on the right with irregular fenestration.

The interior displays considerable early 19th-century decoration, including a staircase with plain, square balusters alternating with cast iron palmette pattern supports. Elaborate cornices and door frames are present, one featuring an Adam-style frieze with fluted and reeded pilasters and scrolled console brackets; another features a mask on a wide keystone and three-dimensional garlands of fruit and flowers over the frieze and pilasters. A Rococo plaster ceiling adorns the first-floor landing, likely from the early 19th century. A ground-floor room to the left of the entrance contains an Elizabethan plaster ceiling inscribed “IG 1586” in several places. The decoration includes fleurs-de-lys and stylized floral bosses and is similar in style to the ceiling at No 41a Fishpool Street. This suggests that the present house incorporates parts of a much older building on the site.