Ewelme Manor

Ewelme Manor is part of the former Ewelme Palace, now a residential house, dating back to around 1450. It was significantly altered in the late 18th century and includes a rear wing. The building is constructed of red brick with an old plain-tile roof and brick stacks at the rear.

The main block is two storeys with a three-window facade. A six-panel door with a fanlight is set within a C19 red brick porch in the centre. All windows are sixteen-pane sashes. The right return is also two storeys with an attic, featuring angled buttresses to the corners. It has twenty-pane sashes to the ground and first floors and a four-pane sash in the attic gable.

The interior retains an arch-braced collar-truss roof with sharply curved wind-braces. This fragment is believed to be the last remaining part of the ancestral home of Geoffrey Chaucer. The house was enlarged after the marriage of Alice Chaucer to William de la Pole (Earl of Suffolk) in 1430. Leland described it in 1542 as having a fair brick and timber base court, an inner house within a moat, built of brick and stone, with a hall featuring iron bars instead of decorative bosses. The portion now known as the Manor was originally part of a self-contained range for guests or servants. An engraving from 1729 shows the building, and it was truncated and remodelled in 1787.