Hangleton Manor Inn The Old Manor House

Manor house, now public house and dwelling, located on Hangleton Valley Drive in Hove.

The earliest range dates to the late 15th century, with the main building constructed around 1540-50 for Richard Bellingham. The structure was altered in the late 16th century. The earlier range was subsequently used as farm buildings, undergoing substantial alteration, refenestration and restoration as a separate dwelling in the 1970s. The main building was restored in 1988-9.

The building is constructed with flint pebble facing, coursed knapped flint to the porch, quoins and ashlar dressings, a plinth, and clay tile hipped roofs. It features numerous brick and rendered stacks, including an external stack with a recessed panel on the rear elevation.

The plan is L-shaped, comprising a 15th-century west wing (The Old Manor House) abutting an L-plan Hangleton Manor Inn. The entrance is positioned on the north front via a porch and screens passage opening onto a stair turret.

The north front displays 2-and-a-half storeys with a lower 2-storey west range. The façade is articulated as 1:1:1:2:8 bays. A 2-and-a-half storey projecting gabled porch occupies the third bay on the left, with a gable front end bay on the left containing a 20th-century casement in the gable end. The porch features a 2-light window with ovolo moulded mullion and transom under a hoodmould. The first floor has a 10-light window to the left and a 6-light window in the porch. To the right is a rebuilt 3-light casement in a partially blocked opening. The ground floor contains two 10-light windows on the left and two altered 6-light windows to the right of the porch, with a square moulded entrance under a hoodmould and an inner half-glazed door. The long, lower western range extends 8 bays with mixed 20th-century renewed fenestration of 2- and 3-light square-headed and Tudor-arch head casements and PVC 'leading' to the west gable end.

The east front is 2 storeys tall and 3 bays wide. The first floor contains 8-light mullion and transom windows, while the ground floor has a 10-light centre window and 3-light casements with shaped wooden heads in the end bays. The entrance is positioned between the first and second bays on the right.

The interior contains a framed wall to the west side of the screens passage at its west end, said to contain ovens. A large timber-framed newel staircase with turned balusters opens out of the through passage. Remains of an earlier timber newel stair survive on the upper storey to the right.

In the room to the left of the screens passage stands fine late 16th-century panelling with fluted pilasters and volute capitals, inscribed with the Ten Commandments above. An unusual piscina in the north wall suggests, in conjunction with the panelling, that the room may have been used as a chapel. The room features a moulded compartment ceiling with 16th-century plasterwork and bosses bearing coats of arms. Two 16th-century chimneypieces are present, one with a lintel carved with grotesque figures. Two original chimneypieces survive on the first floor, one bearing the initials RB (Richard Bellingham). Remains of 17th-century wall painting depicting a 3-masted schooner survive against the north wall. The reset south door of the through passage bears a scratch moulded sundial. Framed partitions and original roof trusses of double butt-purlin construction are said to survive.

The precise evolution of the house between the late 15th and early 17th centuries remains unclear. By the mid-19th century, the farm encompassed the whole ecclesiastical parish of Hangleton. It ceased to function as a farm after the Second World War, with the last remaining farm buildings demolished in the 1950s to make way for housing.