Yelford Manor

Yelford Manor is a timber-framed manor house, now used as a residential dwelling, originally built in the late 15th century for the Hastings family with significant alterations dating to the early 17th and 18th centuries. The building comprises a 2-storey hall range with cross wings, spanning a 5-window frontage.

The structure is timber-framed with close studding, clad in 18th-century limestone rubble on the right side and rear right elevation. The roof is of gabled stone slate with stone stacks; the left stack has been finished in 20th-century brick, while the right end stack and large stone rear lateral stack with 3 ashlar octagonal flues remain in stone.

The hall range features a 20th-century door to the left in a restored 20th-century frame. Above this is a bay window with early 17th-century ovolo-moulded wood-mullioned lights and a gablet with bargeboard. To the right are a 4-light chamfered wood-mullioned window positioned above an early 18th-century four-light transomed window. The most distinctive external feature is a 2-storey polygonal oriel in the right bay of the hall range with hollow-chamfered wood-mullioned windows (originally transomed on the ground floor) and herringbone timbers in the gablet.

The jettied gable ends of the side wings display 18th-century fenestration: on the right, a 3-light leaded casement above a 4-light mullioned and transomed window with shutters; on the left, a restored 3-light wood-mullioned window above a 5-light wood-mullioned window with leaded and lattice cames. The left side wall has a 3-light wood-mullioned window, with two similar 2-light windows above an altered 3-light window to the rear of the left wing.

A 2-bay stair turret adjoins the rear left wing. An 18th-century L-shaped service range extends to the rear, remodelled in the mid-19th century, constructed of limestone rubble with ashlar quoins and a gabled stone slate roof.

The interior is notable for its chamber arrangements divided by studded partitions. The hall contains a 20th-century arch to an open fireplace with moulded jambs and a chamfered beam. The screens passage is divided by a studded partition with 2 early 17th-century moulded doorways and a studded door to the left, and a late 15th-century chamfered panelled screen to the right, with a chamfered arched doorway leading to the rear. Twentieth-century winder stairs rise to a first-floor gallery with arched hollow-chamfered doorways, one bearing a Hastings monogram in the spandrel. The first floor of the hall retains a late 15th-century fireplace cornice to the rear.

The 3-bay hall roof features 3 collar trusses and an arch-braced collar-truss with arched windbraces and butt purlins, repaired with a 17th-century brace. The service wing to the left has 2 ground-floor rooms with chamfered beams, a chamfered arched fireplace on the first floor, and a 4-bay collar-truss roof with arched windbraces and butt purlins. The parlour wing to the right has a similar 3-bay roof, with an early 17th-century panelled ground-floor room featuring an Ionic pilaster and an elaborately carved overmantle. The overmantle displays 3 blind arches divided by caryatids and a frieze of dragons bearing the arms of John Hastings and Mary Pudsey (married 1619). The stair-turret roof is a queen-post truss.

Many timbers throughout the building display late 16th-century banded red and gold decoration, consistent with similar work found at Church Farmhouse, South Leigh. The presence of a first-floor hall fireplace, the 2-storey oriel, and indications of a blocked 15th-century first-floor window suggest that Yelford Manor originally incorporated a 2-storey hall. The fact that the hall and side wings are not linked structurally indicates they were probably built in stages.