Preston Manor And Attached Railings

Preston Manor and attached railings form a manor house with medieval origins, substantially rebuilt in the Georgian period and extensively altered in the early 20th century. The building dates originally from around 1250, was rebuilt in 1738, and underwent major alterations in 1905. It is constructed of stucco with roofs of Welsh slate.

Some remains of the house of around 1250 survive in the basement. The house was substantially rebuilt in 1738, probably to the designs of Thomas Western, then Lord of the Manor. This Georgian house is of two storeys over a basement with dormers in the attic. The northern, entrance front has five windows to the centre, with wings that are largely blank on the upper storey apart from a single window introduced into the east wing.

In 1905, the house was altered and enlarged to the designs of Charles Stanley Peach, who added a two-window range west of the original house and a three-window range north and west of that. The entrance is reached by steps leading up to an enclosed Doric porch with paterae over the columns and a mutule cornice. The porch has double panelled doors with sidelights and flat-arched windows to the sides with aprons. This porch dates from around 1800 but was recast in 1905. Long and short quoins mark the sides of the building.

All windows are flat-arched with simple dripmoulds and louvred shutters. The ground-floor windows on the central portion have six-over-six sashes of original design, while those on the first floor have three-over-three sashes. In front of the wings on either side are enclosed verandahs which act as corridors within the house. These have cast-iron work in a revived early 19th-century style, large windows of small panes, and tented copper roofs. The western verandah dates from 1905 and extends across the front of the first 1905 range. The eastern verandah was designed in 1910 by W T Cripps, surveyor to the Stanford Estate, as a duplicate of that of 1905. The building has a parapet that is upswept to the centre, a double hipped roof to the central part with a stack between the ridges, and hipped roofs to the rest, those to the wings set transversely to the main roof. Railings are attached to the porch steps.

The garden front has broadly the same arrangement of wings and ranges. Steps rise on either side of a central enclosed porch of dressed flint with stone dressings. This has flat-arched entrances to either side with keystones under open segmental pediments on consoles, a south-facing window with architrave and pediment, and carved coats of arms in a recessed panel below the window. The cornice over the window is that of the porch as a whole, which is topped by a parapet. This porch is a Classicised adaptation of a tower in an Elizabethan manner that was erected on this front in the late 19th century.

On the central part of the garden front, the windows match those of the entrance front. The wings to either side have broad French windows under segmental arches and balconies with iron railings. The western extension has tripartite French windows with engaged Doric columns and pilasters, entablature, and a pediment over the central window. A parapet runs overall, upswept between wings and centre, and side stacks are present on all parts on this side.

A single-storey extension to the east incorporates an 18th-century round-arched entrance, introduced from a house in London, with a fanlight with decorative glazing, a panelled door of original design, and a doorcase of partly fluted Doric columns supporting an entablature and open pediment with dentil cornice. A plain single-storey extension lies to the west.

The entrance hall was formed in 1905 from two rooms and is now divided by a screen of paired cast-iron Ionic columns distyle in antis, with capitals of Greek Revival design. At the east end is a chimneypiece of late 17th-century date in its original position, with the cornice at this end from 1738. At the west end is a chimneypiece of early 19th-century date with scrolled brackets, pulvinated frieze and modillion cornice to the mantelshelf. The modillion cornice at this end is probably of early 20th-century date.

To the east of the entrance hall is the Macquoid Room, which has panelling designed by Percy Macquoid after the model of a room from Clifford's Inn now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The room contains a marble chimneypiece designed by Macquoid, the bolection-moulded surround modelled on one at Belton House, the rest, with putti to the pilasters and cornice breaking forward, being Macquoid's invention. The room also features a cast-iron grate in the Georgian taste with imitation coals lit by electricity, designed by Macquoid to emit light but not heat, an early example of such illusions. These fittings came originally from Number 8 Palace Court, Bayswater, designed for Macquoid by Ernest George, and were bequeathed to Brighton Corporation as part of the Macquoid Bequest in 1939. In the north-east corridor are panels of Flemish, Swedish and English glass of the 15th to 18th centuries, inserted in the glazing, from the Macquoid Bequest.

On the south front and east of the staircase is the Morning Room with an early 18th-century cornice and a marble chimneypiece of late 17th or early 18th-century date. On the south front and west of the staircase is the Cleves Room, which has a chimneypiece of around 1800 formerly in the drawing room, with reeded architrave and an oval panel of fruit. The east and west walls are covered with a fine example of Dutch or Flemish leatherwork of 1675 to 1680, formerly supposed to be associated with Anne of Cleves. The coverings on the north and south walls, and the frieze, are of Tynecastle canvas made to match.

The drawing room, immediately west of the entrance hall, is of two storeys in height, with dado rail, dentil and egg-and-dart mouldings to the cornice, a coved ceiling of 1750 to 1760 decorated with arabesques, and an oval dome of 1770 to 1780. The late 18th-century chimneypiece has inlays in the form of fluting and panels of Classical figures, and was installed in 1905. Two entrances on the east wall have 18th-century architraves and panelled doors, but the bracketed pediments and pulvinated frieze are of 1923 by Messrs Fox of Brighton.

The dining room is in the first, western range added in 1905 and has dado rail, modillion cornice, and a chimneypiece of around 1770 in green and white marble with flanking engaged Ionic columns and festoons to the architrave. The north-west corridor has Doric pilasters at its west end, and pilasters with scrolled brackets half-way along its length.

The principal staircase, in the centre of the south front, is taken from a pattern-book by Abraham Swan and dates from about 1738. It is of open well type with curtail step, turned newel, column-on-vase balusters, wreathed, ramped and moulded handrail, carved string and panelled dado. An alcove at the foot of the staircase is by J L Denman. The landing on the first floor has a Vitruvian scroll to the cornice.

There are four bedrooms and a dressing room in the central block, all with 18th-century fielded panelling and cornice, except for the north-east room where the panelling appears to have been covered over. The south-east room has a cast-iron fireplace of around 1900 and is fitted with night-bolts. The south-west and north-west rooms have similar fireplaces. The north-east room has a fireplace installed in 1911 from Acacia House, Preston village, of late 18th or early 19th-century design and possibly a reproduction, with fluted and cabled pilasters and panels of Classical figures. This room also contains a ceiling light of petal form in copper and brass by W A S Benson, of late 19th or early 20th-century date.

The east wing at this level contains two bedrooms, each with a Vitruvian scroll cornice of 1738, fireplace surround of 18th-century date and cast-iron grate of the 1840s. The west wing is taken up by the upper part of the drawing room.

The basement retains, under the central block, the vestiges of the plan of hall, screen and parlour from a house of around 1250. There is a chamfered round arch perhaps of that date to the servants' hall, a partly-obliterated late 16th-century flat-arched doorway in the west wall of the kitchen and a fragment of a similar doorway beyond the servants' hall, and a late 16th or early 17th-century brick fireplace in the boot hall.

The property is of group value.