The Manor House

The Manor House

House, built circa 1488 with additions in the early 16th century, 1697 and later. The building was constructed for Abbot Selwood of Glastonbury Abbey as a lodging place for students travelling to Gloucester College, Oxford, and for the Abbot's use when travelling on the Somerset to London road.

The main structure features light brown limestone ashlar to the ground floor and chalk ashlar to the first floor. The porch is of uncoursed sarsen rubble with the first floor faced in Flemish bond brick with vitrified headers. To the right of a straight joint, the walling is of chalk. The west gable wall is of sarsen uncoursed random rubble, while the rear elevation is of squared and coursed chalk. Rendered gable-end stacks and a chalk block rear stack support a stone slate roof.

The building is a ground-floor hall house with an L-shaped plan, originally comprising a hall and two parlours. A detached east kitchen block was joined to the main house in the early 16th century. The first floor contained a garderobe in the rear wing and two large chambers for the Abbot and lodgers. The structure rises two storeys with a fenestration pattern of 3:1:2.

The porch features a three-centred arch with moulded architrave. The original front door has a four-centred arch with moulded architrave and quatrefoiled spandrels. The three-bay facade to the left displays four-light stone mullioned and transomed windows to the ground floor and two-light stone mullioned windows to the first floor, each with a flattened ogee and cinquefoiled head, separated by buttresses. A similar two-light window appears on the first floor of the porch. To the right of the porch is an early 16th-century two-light stone-mullioned window with an arched head. Other windows are mid-20th-century casements, one of which blocks an original doorway to the kitchen. Circa 1960 insertions include a four-centred door replacing a window in the west gable wall and a two-light stone mullioned window in the top right of the north-facing gable of the projecting rear wing. Some 15th-century windows have been restored, and the rear wing has two early 18th-century leaded casements.

The interior features a large chamfered beam and bressumer in the kitchen. The hall contains moulded beams with floral bosses, including a Tudor Rose, at intersections. An early to mid-16th-century panelled partition divides the original hall in two, and stopped chamfers appear on a beam in the rear wall. A stud and plank partition on the first floor originally divided the Abbot's chamber from the lodgers' dormitory, with a moulded cornice in both rooms. The Abbot's chamber has a carved frieze with mouchettes. Perpendicular style corbels support an inserted ceiling beneath an arch-braced roof with curved struts to the collar, chamfered butt purlins, and cusped windbraces. Between the Abbot's chamber and the room above the porch is a screen with trefoil-headed openings to the upper half. Winders to a straight-flight stone staircase at the junction with the rear wing are adjoined by a plank and stud screen with two arched doors having moulded oak architraves, opening to two rooms in the rear wing, one formerly the garderobe.

An early 19th-century single-bay rear block is joined by a two-storey block to the main range. This addition is of squared and coursed chalk with brick dressings, a tiled and hipped roof, mid-20th-century two-light leaded casements, brick string at floor level, and dentil eaves. One brick rendered lateral stack is present.

The building is considered an early example of a two-storey manor house with parallels to similar late 15th-century Somerset priests' houses connected with Glastonbury Abbey. The cusped windbraces and arch braces are typical of western carpentry styles of the period.