Maunds Farmhouse

Maunds Farmhouse is a building of group value, probably rebuilt in the early 17th century, incorporating late 12th and possibly later medieval features, and altered in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It is a farmhouse, and formerly a manor house, now a house. It is constructed of coursed squared marlstone, with wooden lintels, an ashlar plinth and quoins, and has a Stonesfield-slate roof with stone-and-brick stacks. The building has an L-shaped plan, developed over two or three construction phases. The front façade, originally four windows wide on the left, has a higher ridge and contains 3-light casements to both floors, the upper ones featuring splayed mullions and leaded glazing. The central section has a symmetrical arrangement of three windows, likely representing an 18th-century remodelling, with a 6-panel door flanked by renewed casements, and 2-light early 18th-century casements at the first floor. To the extreme right of the central section are traces of a blocked doorway. The steep-pitched roof extends over a blind bay to the right, and returns to a 2-window rear wing, which features a fine ashlar gable stack. This wing retains leaded casements, including three at the first floor with oak splayed mullions and stop-chamfered lintels. The rear wall of the main range, possibly medieval, is partly obscured by a tall 19th-century brick wing, but retains four old oak-framed casements, one within the blocked doorway of a former through passage, and another within a tall, narrow opening which may have been a hall window. Inside the left section, a large stop-chamfered spine beam remains, alongside heavy square joists with face tenons and soffit spurs. The central section contains massive intersecting chamfered beams and a wide inglenook fireplace with a cambered chamfered bressumer, the chamfer returning down ashlar jambs, and a rubble relieving arch. Two adjoining round-arched doorways, dating from around 1200, pierce the wall separating the central section from the right section. These doorways have moulded imposts and chamfers that terminate in decorative stops, and originally opened from a former through passage. The doors are of unequal size and are likely two of the three service doors belonging to a large 12th-century manor house, the service end of which partly survives in the right bay and rear wing. The present left, middle, and right sections of the house probably correspond to the chamber block, hall, and service range of a later hall house. The service range formerly extended further to the rear, and the ruins of this part contain a large 17th-century open fireplace. The manor house was likely that of Warin FitzGerald, who inherited a third share of the manor of Deddington in 1190.