Minley Manor

Minley Manor is a large country house built between 1858 and 1862 to designs by Henry Clutton for Raikes Currie, initially modelled on the Château de Blois in the Loire Valley. The house was extended and altered in 1885 to 1888 by George Devey, with further alterations in 1898 by Arthur Castings. It was adapted for military use in the mid-20th century.

The house is constructed of red brick with blue brick diaper work, limestone dressings, and carved and moulded ornament, with knapped flint infill. The roofs are slate and lead with brick and stone chimneystacks, while the servant's hall has a copper roof.

The building stands on a plateau with land falling away to the south, its principal rooms and terraced gardens overlooking open parkland framed by wooded pleasure grounds. The entrance front faces north-west into a forecourt, flanked to the east by the service wing which terminates in Arch Cottage. Access is from the north-east through an entrance arch between the cottage and service range. The forecourt is enclosed to the west by an orangery loggia and looks north onto an avenue of limes and wellingtonias planted when Clutton's house was built.

The roughly rectangular southern block, comprising Clutton's original house, contains the entrance lobby and hall, main staircase, principal rooms, and the ante-room to the dining room to its east—all reordered since Clutton's time, with dated and initialled interiors indicating work for Bertram Wodehouse Currie in the mid- to later 1880s. The dining room overlooks a cloister linking the house to Devey's chapel, which extends at right angles and has a towering octagonal eastern end. In the angle between the main house and service wing stands a prominent octagonal water and stair tower.

Exterior

Minley Manor is a large country house in a wildly asymmetrical French Gothic style, modelled initially on Loire châteaux, particularly Blois. It features tall roofs in the French manner and ordered banks of windows terminating in dormers, though without the ground floor arcade characteristic of Blois (except possibly the dining room colonnade, which may be later). The entrance front was particularly altered by Devey to form an asymmetrical, picturesque composition, considerably different from the restrained Gothic Revival elevation Clutton depicted in 1871. Throughout, recurring architectural devices and details are used with subtle variations, Devey's additions responding to the character of the existing house.

The house ranges from one to three storeys punctuated by towers with tall roofs. Chimneys are similarly tall, composed of groups of octagonal stacks that widen at the head, built from brick with broad, flush bands of limestone, and are strikingly placed centrally against towers. Windows to the principal rooms generally have 19th or early 20th century metal-framed casements set in stone, hollow-chamfered architraves with mullions and/or transoms; the service range has timber-framed sashes to the ground floor in plain chamfered openings. Narrow moulded stone cill and impost bands unite elements of the facades. Steep gabled full dormer windows in stone with brick cheeks rise from eaves level, with an inverted, truncated, triangular panel in brick in the apex. On the entrance front the apices are plain; elsewhere most have a carved stone medallion with a floral motif or heraldic cartouche, some repeated across the house, and most have ornate finials. Arcades of cusped Gothic arches form balustrades and parapets, with blind variations forming corbel tables at the eaves.

The entrance facade, ranging from one to three storeys, faces the forecourt, enclosed to the north-east by the service range and south-east by the orangery loggia. An octagonal water and stair tower on the left (added by Devey) and a tall square corner tower on the right dominate the composition. Between them is a busy arrangement of steeply pitched gables and dormers, curved projecting bays, an oriel window (originally below Clutton's stair tower), and tall chimneystacks, made busier by Devey's added gable with a clock set in a moulded lozenge surround and a bellcote above. The water tower has geometric diapering and a pyramidal lead roof surmounted by a lantern with a small ogival dome. Lower stages have ascending mullion windows. The blind upper stage has vertical stone ribs at the angles of the drum and is surmounted by a pierced stone balustrade. Clutton's corner tower to the right has an exceptionally tall roof against which an offset external stack rises centrally.

An open-sided single-storey limestone entrance porch and brick screen wall, both by Devey, are built in front of the original facade. The porch has a central outer entrance beneath a crocketed ogival head rising through a pierced balustrade; all openings have hollow chamfered architraves, and within the side openings are moulded bases, presumably for statuary or urns. The front door has an elaborate architrave with foliate stop-moulds and a cusped head with bold twisted leaf crockets framing an angel holding heraldic shields. The roof is deeply coffered and the floor has a lattice of stone with tile infill. To the front are limestone mounting blocks and wrought iron bootscrapers.

Clutton's house is more apparent in the return elevations. At the western corner, the square tower is set forward on the left, while a very tall banded stack and a canted bay define the junction of the south-west and south-east elevations. Upper floor windows are related to windows below by plain aprons, and in the case of dormers, by blank panels in the balustrade, providing vertical emphasis derived from Blois. On the tower such windows are placed centrally, with the enriched gable treated as a dormer window set into the tower roof. Regularly spaced and fenestrated bays to the ground floor have four-light mullion and transom windows with chamfered architraves, while first floor windows have two lights. The tower and canted bay have larger windows proportionate to their greater mass. Windows are enriched with hood moulds adjoining a drip course, cills have foliate bosses, and a pierced parapet unites these features while gargoyles project at the eaves. A similarly treated entrance gives onto the garden terrace. On the southern face of the tower and southern elevation is a single luccum-like timber dormer with cusped bargeboards. On the southern-most canted corner, a stone sundial in a moulded shield, flanked by a putto and winged hour glass with the inscription 'TEMPUS FUGIT', sits beneath a moulded corner bracket beneath the parapet. A rounded oriel window—probably added by Devey—defines the eastern angle of the library. On the return elevation, tall narrow, paired, pedimented window bays serving the staircase have juxtaposed window heights.

The dining room is set back behind a six-bay cloister that adjoins the chapel, with the octagonal water tower rising centrally behind it. It has plain chamfered, three-light, mullioned and transomed windows; those in the first and fifth bays are blind and contain decorative plaster panels. One depicts Saint Lawrence with emblematic details relating to charity and strength, the other Saint Catherine representing philosophy and faith. The cloister consists of an arcade of stone segmental arches with stone shafts with different foliate capitals, below a balcony with elaborate grotesques to dispel rainwater. The first floor has inner paired mullion and transom windows and outer single windows alternating with three evenly spaced dormers above (presumably by Devey), which have enriched pediments as elsewhere in the house, with a balustrade between.

The cloister turns through 90 degrees in line with the ground floor of the chapel and is enclosed by low stone parapet walls. It has a coffered ceiling in deeply moulded plaster in geometric patterns, also found in interior rooms; floors are tiled in sections reflecting the bay rhythm. The door between chapel and cloister has a shell motif in the head and sits in a moulded and panelled timber architrave with foliate spandrels. Its moulded stone doorcase has an ogival hood-mould with crocketed finials. At the opposite end of the cloister, a simply detailed door gives access to the house. The cloister contains alabaster and Portland stone memorials and panels depicting biblical scenes. A Portland stone memorial to George Devey erected by Bertram Wodehouse Currie and dated 1887 depicts a bust of the architect above the tools of his trade, with an inscription in Latin below. There is a white marble memorial to Bertram Wodehouse Currie's wife, whose conversion to Catholicism may have prompted building the new chapel. Inset into the wall are a pair of relief panels, one depicting the Presentation of Christ at the Temple.

The external form of the chapel resembles the chevet plan of a French medieval church. It is built of stone with knapped flint panels on its principal elevations and brick elsewhere, with an elongated octagonal plan. The ground floor is blind and the first floor an arcade set with Romanesque arches with alternating casement windows and blind flint panels. Offset buttresses mark the corners, and there is a moulded corbel table below the eaves. The roof is lead-covered with hips rising to a ridge with finials at either end. A blind arcade of stone and flint joins it to the main house at first-floor level.

In contrast to the main house, the forecourt elevation of the service range, remodelled by Devey and completed by Castings, is in a more ordered 1:3:1:3 arrangement in two storeys and an attic. It has a dominating square tower to the left, reflecting the mass of the stair tower on the right, and a symmetrical composition in between with regularly spaced windows and tall, full-height pedimented dormers linked by pierced, cusped balustrades, the motif echoed in the corbel table of the tower. Tall stacks with grouped, banded octagonal shafts frame the composition, as elsewhere in the house rising against the tower and at the rear appearing above the roofline. Ground floor windows are sashes in plain hollow chamfered architraves, while first floor and dormer windows are metal casements in richly moulded surrounds. The tower is symmetrically arranged with a first-floor balcony supported on stone brackets with a richly moulded balustrade. Above, a tall central panel rises through two storeys, on each floor incorporating the window with a plain apron below, the gabled apex treated as a dormer window but set against the tall flared tower roof. The central entrance bay is surmounted by an ornate pedimented dormer with a pierced carved stone central roundel of foliate design and exuberant crocketed and cusped panels to each side. At ground floor, a large central round-arched opening with chamfered orders and moulded stops has an ogival head with a crocketed finial above moulded panels bearing the date '1898' and the initials 'LSC' for Laurence Currie. Set back within the brick-lined porch is a single door with moulded muntins within a pointed arched architrave.

The service wing is set around a courtyard reached by an arched entrance from the drive. It has a covered walkway at ground-floor level beneath a projecting upper floor supported on decorative timber shafts, linking the main service range with the two-storey wing on the west. The rear elevations show multiple phases of building and extension. Stylistic devices are continued from the principal elevations but are generally simplified and functional.

Interior

The principal rooms are at the southern end of the building; service rooms are in the northern range. The interior was extensively remodelled in the later 19th and early 20th centuries such that the original plan is unclear, with the inner hall representing the most intact survival from the original house.

The vestibule has tall timber front doors with fielded linenfold panels. Walls have timber dado panelling and tall, panelled double inner doors with panelled linings beneath a moulded cornice. The ceiling has deep plaster mouldings in a geometric pattern with a central star shape.

The inner hall is a double-height, half-cube space treated as a courtyard, fully lined with plaster panelling two bays deep and three bays wide, with fluted pilasters with composite capitals and a modillion cornice to the ground floor and Ionic pilasters to the first floor. A large chimneypiece has deeply projecting consoles supporting a moulded, dentilled frieze and mantel-shelf. The over-mantel has square pilasters with relief moulding and a framed panel with egg and dart moulding beneath a dentil cornice. There are shell alcoves to either side of the entrance. Doorways have semi-circular pediments; those on the side walls are wider due to their different proportions, suggesting the decorative scheme has been inserted into an earlier room. Blind doorways are included to retain strict symmetry. Above the chimneypiece, a narrow first floor gallery or passage with square Ionic piers has a scrolled, foliate cast iron balustrade, reached by a stair with square newels and turned balusters. The ceiling has geometric mouldings and the floor is covered with Minton tiles.

The Green Room, also neoclassical in manner, is lined in fielded panelling between Ionic pilasters beneath a dentil cornice and plaster ceiling with deep geometric moulding. The chimneypiece, similarly treated, has in the over-mantel a plaster relief panel depicting a mounted Tudor cavalry officer, signed 'M Hiolle, 1887'. Windows have heraldic shields in stained glass lights above the transoms.

The Drawing Room is a striking room fully panelled in Spanish walnut, using a mixed palette of classical and Jacobean mouldings with details picked out in gilt. Wall panels are enriched with low relief foliate carving. The chimneypiece has scrolled consoles with lions supporting the mantel-shelf. The over-mantel has an alcove recessed behind paired arched heads with a moulded pendant. The ceiling is a coffered geometric grid incorporating shields, emblems, and interlinking 'C' motifs. The initials BWC recur, suggesting a date of circa 1885. Within the canted window bay, set behind a balustraded arched screen, there are alcoves at the outer angles and the enriched wall panels—which elsewhere are purely decorative—incorporate the head of a figure with a long moustache, perhaps a portrait of Currie, and horses' heads. Two built-in vitrines have portraits and term figure busts moulded into their frames. In the east corner, a doorway with a moulded, fluted architrave leads to the garden terrace. Windows have vertical sliding shutter boxes.

The door leading to the library has an ornate classical architrave with a segmental broken pediment housing a clock. Double doors are of six raised and fielded panels. The library is also panelled, with plain fielded panels to the height of the picture rail. Bookshelves are built into the walls. There is a substantial, panelled chimneypiece with a raised entablature with a deep moulded cornice and large supporting consoles.

The dining room, extant in 1871 but later remodelled internally, has apsidal ends with, at the entrance end, an in antis screen of fluted columns with composite capitals. The room is fully lined in moulded panelling between Ionic pilasters above a dado and beneath a deep modillion cornice, with shell alcoves in the apses. Doorcases and alcoves have broken pediments. The Jacobean-manner chimneypiece is heavily moulded with swag, shell, and acanthus mouldings to the mantel-shelf, above which is a plaster panel depicting a bucolic figure in a castellated landscape, similar to the panel by Hiolle in the Green Room but unsigned. The ceiling has shallow geometric mouldings.

The anteroom to the dining room has an arched screen at either end, timber fielded panelling below the dado, and less substantial pilasters added in a later phase of decoration above, beneath a dentil cornice. The low ceiling is coffered in a geometric pattern. Doors have fielded panelling.

The room known as the Night Bar, in the north-west corner of the southern range, is a relatively plain room with egg and dart moulding below a coved cornice. The ceiling is intricately painted in the style of Adam with delicate scrolls, swags, urns, and flora. The fireplace has a chamfered and moulded grey-brown marble surround. The window has a vertical sliding shutter box.

Principal rooms retain their door furniture, which includes decorative brass fingerplates, door handles, and rim locks.

The principal staircase rises from a timber panelled stair hall between the inner hall (from which it was divided in the later 19th or early 20th century), the Green Room, and the library. It rises in an oval well with vertical dado panelling continuing to the landing and a moulded handrail. At intervals, moulded plaster bunches of oak leaves augment the cornice. The windows to the stairs are leaded in a geometric pattern. The spinal wall at the centre of the stair terminates at the top in a large chest-like finial with a plaster base enriched with a blind arcade and a carved oak head resembling a sarcophagus. It is rumoured to be the tomb of the daughter of a previous inhabitant.

A secondary stair within the octagonal stair turret has turned newels and square balusters with a moulded rail. At upper level it rises as a winder stair against the water tank, providing access to the roof.

Internally, the chapel has been divided laterally with an inserted first floor. Doors and window openings to the ground floor are in pointed arches, and doors have fielded panels; that to the cloister has a round head and shell relief moulding. The chapel has a vaulted roof lined with timber boarding and has timber ribs with moulded foliate pendants.

Between the ground floor of the chapel and the dining room are two rooms with similar geometrically moulded ceilings. One has linenfold panelling to dado level, the other modern timber panelling. A timber door with fielded panels and linenfold mouldings separates the two and appears to have been re-hung.

The landings on the first and second floors have a deeply moulded coffered ceiling. On the first floor there are two rooms of note: in the southern-most corner, a timber-panelled room with built-in bookcases and a chimneypiece with Delft-style tiles and a grey marble mantelpiece. To the north, above the library, a timber panelled room now painted white has a chimneypiece with Jacobean moulded jambs and a mantelpiece with foliate, egg and dart, and fillet mouldings. The over-mantel has fluted pilasters, scroll moulding, and a tripartite framed panel with a semi-circular keyed pediment. The ceiling has shallow relief moulding set out on a grid. Both rooms have been subdivided by 20th century partitioning which is not of special interest.

Elsewhere, rooms on the upper floors are plain with simple dado rails and cornices. Fireplaces have been removed and blocked, and there is much subdivision of rooms.

The service wing is served by a number of staircases with square newels, simple turned balusters, and moulded handrails, the principal stair set behind the main entrance. The service rooms in the northern ranges have been adapted for use as offices and bathrooms and do not contain features of note. The servant's hall, latterly used as a conference room, has a copper-covered roof lantern.

Low forecourt walls to the north-west are built in brick with limestone copings and gauged brick dressings. Entrances to the turning circle have piers with curbing stones and shaped finials with volutes to the corners, and return walls which curve and ramp upwards to join the servants' hall and orangery loggia wall.