Adderbury House

SP4735 ADDERBURY THE GREEN (East side) Adderbury East 7/113 Adderbury House 08/12/55 (Formerly listed as Adderbury House with outbuildings and gateway) GV II Large house incorporating parts of a mansion, now an old people's home. C17 house of Earls of Rochester remodelled probably 1722 for Duke of Argyll; enlarged probably 1731 by Roger Morris; altered for Duke of Buccleuch in 1768, probably by sir William Chambers; mostly demolished 1808; re-modelled and enlarged 1891 for J.W. Larnach. Marlstone ashlar; Stonesfield-slate roofs with ashlar stacks. Courtyard plan. Baroque style. 3 storeys. 6-window south front, now the entrance front, with plinth, second-floor storey band and a plain parapet rising from a similar band, breaks forward in the 2 middle bays below a triangular pediment containing a blind occulus; sashes have semi-circular heads at ground and first floors, and have segmental heads at second floor. The central doorway also has a semi-circlular head, and it and 2 flanking windows are sheltered by a late-C19 stone portico with 4 ionic columns and a heavy entablature. The outer bays are probably of 1722, the date inscribed on 2 very fine lead rainwater heads in the form of triangular consoles with scrolled lugs. Return walls both have plainer lead heads dated 1750, and on the west is a head bearing the Argyll crest and a date noted as 1724 but now obscured by an iron band. 4-window late-C19 east and west ranges, with similar windows, are set back but project a bay either side of the main range; both have parapets which break into central pediments. East range probably incorporates some walling from the earlier building. Single-storey kitchen range stands on a plinth containing the cellars of the early-C18 north range, originally forming the left side of a 3-sided courtyard. The inner faces of the north and south ranges both retain some early walling. All ranges have hipped roofs. Interior: south range retains some C18 egg-and-dart architraves, a Rococo plaster ceiling in a first-floor room, several small C18 fireplaces and the upper flights of an apsidal late-C18 stair with stick balusters and a mahogany handrail; the fine cellars below the north wing have depressed-arched stone vaults springing from square imposts, and are 3 bays wide by at least 7 bays long. (Buildings of England: Oxfordshire: pp416-418; VCH: Oxfordshire: Vol IX, pp7-9; Country Life 1949, Vol 105, pp30-32)

Listing NGR: SP4763335639