Harcourt House And Attached Walls And Outbuildings

Harcourt House, with its attached walls and outbuildings, represents the remnants of a former manor house dating back to the 15th and mid-16th centuries, originally built for the Harcourt family. The gatehouse, positioned centrally in the front façade, was constructed around 1540 and subsequently remodelled around 1868. It is built of rendered limestone rubble, topped with a gabled stone slate roof, and features end stacks finished in 20th-century brick. The two-story, three-window range incorporates a label mould with Harcourt arms at the stops over a central archway, which was filled in during the 1868 remodelling with an arched doorway. Above the archway sits a mid-16th century canted oriel window with hollow-chamfered stone mullions to the lights, further adorned with Harcourt arms carved on the base; it is flanked by hood moulds over three-light hollow-chamfered stone-mullioned windows, reflecting similar 19th-century replacements.

A left extension was added in 1953. The right extension, dating from 1868, incorporates earlier 15th-century stables in the centre, constructed from similar materials but with walls of coursed limestone rubble. These stables are two stories high, with an eleven-window range, and feature similar mid-16th century windows above a segmental-headed archway, formerly the stable entrance, with head corbels. The rear of the house presents a block built in 1868 of similar materials, two stories high with a two-window range, featuring sash windows and a hipped roof.

Internally, the gatehouse contains a mid-16th century moulded stone fireplace and a chamfered stone fireplace, although the roof space remains uninspected. The rear portion of the house includes a mid-19th century staircase, fireplaces, and a library.

Significant ancillary features include a circa 15th-century wall extending approximately 80 meters to the rear left, constructed of coursed limestone rubble with a crenellated parapet. This wall runs between the churchyard and the house and features hood moulds over two chamfered arched doorways. A mid-18th century wall, around 5 meters in length, also of coursed limestone rubble with a round-arched doorway, connects the rear of the house to an outbuilding. This outbuilding is weatherboarded with a hipped thatched roof. A circa 18th-century cartshed is built of limestone rubble, with a gabled stone slate roof, and features an eight-bay collar-truss roof with butt purlins and jowled posts. Finally, a circa 15th-century limestone rubble wall, crenellated with a chamfered archway, extends approximately 10 meters from the rear wall of the cartshed.

The Harcourt family occupied this site from the mid-12th century. Following the death of Sir Philip Harcourt in 1688, the main house fell into disrepair and was largely demolished in 1750, coinciding with the construction of Nuneham Courtenay. Harcourt House was reoccupied as a family home in 1948. A plan from 1726 indicates that the stables and gatehouse range were located north of the main house, arranged around a courtyard. Only the Great Kitchen, Pope’s Tower, Manor Farmhouse, and dovecote now remain from that original layout.