Boughton Place

Boughton Place is a country house of considerable architectural importance, dating primarily from the 1520s with major extensions around 1553 and circa 1586, plus alterations in the 19th and 20th centuries. It stands on the north side of Church Road in Boughton Malherbe near Grafty Green. The building is constructed of ragstone, with a north gable end and gable end turret of red brick in English bond, and a plain tile roof. It may represent a fragment of a larger courtyard house, with a 16th-century core section extended southwards, probably in the mid-16th century, and a late 16th or early 17th-century north gable end.

The west elevation displays two storeys, attics and a cellar. A moulded stone plinth runs along the left (north) section, ramping upwards at its left end and extending to the door of the right (south) section, with the eaves of the left section set higher than those of the right. The left gable end and the low gable end turret feature brick crow-step gables, while the right gable end has a rendered coping. Multiple projecting brick stacks are visible: two to the left gable end, a slender one to the gable end of the turret, and additional stacks at the junction of the two sections and to the rear of the right section.

Fenestration is irregular across both sections. The left section contains four stone mullioned windows with hollow-chamfered reveals and round-headed lights, while the right section has three. A prominent six-light mullioned and transomed window with moulded jambs sits under the eaves at the left end of the left section. A three-light mullioned frieze window is positioned centrally under the eaves, immediately left of a two-storey canted stone bay with four-light mullioned and transomed side lights almost continuous with eight-light mullioned and transomed centre lights on each floor. Lower on the elevation sits a two-light window with a squared hoodmould, followed by a three-light frieze window on the ground floor (lowered in the mid-20th century) and a three-light window at the left end of the ground floor.

The right section displays a more regular three-window front to the first floor, with stone cross windows and moulded horizontal hoodmoulds. The ground floor includes a three-light mullioned window to the left end, three small rectangular windows and one pointed arched window morticed for iron bars, along with three rectangular hollow-chamfered cellar openings with level moulded dripmoulds. A low four-centred arched hollow-chamfered doorway is located towards the left end of the right section. At the rear stands a two-storey stone stair turret with a moulded stone cornice band below the eaves, a hipped roof, and two-light hollow-chamfered mullioned first floor window to the rear and a similar three-light ground floor window to the long left side.

Three hipped dormers pierce the roof.

The interior contains substantial architectural features. The ground-floor room at the right end has heavy scantling girders and an ogee-headed stone niche to its rear wall. Moulded stone fireplaces appear throughout, notably one on the first floor of the right section featuring a datestone, possibly re-set, of 1553. A blocked moulded opening with an elongated four-centred arched head on the ground floor of the left gable end bears a re-set 1586 datestone. Moulded stone doorways are distributed across the house, with a particularly elaborate deeply moulded stone doorway to the long right side of the rear stone stair turret, flanked by fluted Corinthian pilasters. The first floor room at the left end displays exposed framing with an ogee brace and continuous moulded wooden cornice. Moulded beams are visible in the rear stair turret. A 16th-century ribbed plaster ceiling survives in the ground floor left room, and fragments of an ornate 16th-century painted coved plaster ceiling remain in the first floor room of the right section. The first floor room of the right section also retains fragments of panelling in its window recesses. Wooden panelling from the 1520s was removed in 1923.

Boughton Place was the home of the Wotton family and the birthplace of Sir Henry Wotton.