Manor House And Attached Walls And Outbuildings

Manor house, early to mid 17th century, enlarged probably in the late 17th century for William Rollinson, altered in the mid 18th century possibly for Thomas Rollinson, and remodelled around 1800. The building is constructed from coursed squared limestone with ashlar dressings, with Stonesfield-slate and artificial stone-slate roofs and ashlar stacks. It forms an L-plan with 2 storeys plus attic on a semi-basement.

The front elevation is remodelled with 8 windows across a taller late 17th-century range. The design breaks forward in the 3 bays to the left, which contain 3 closely-spaced 6-pane sashes on the first floor above a wide canted projection containing three 12-pane sashes at ground level. The remaining bays (except bay 8 with blocked windows) have similar first-floor windows. At ground floor, bay 4 contains a 12-pane sash in a stone-architraved former doorway, bay 5 has the present doorway below a lead-covered canopy dating to around 1800, and bays 6 and 7 have closely-spaced full-height 18-pane sashes. A moulded parapet breaks around the projecting bays and returns around the end.

The right gable wall features pairs of sashes above 2-light stone-mullioned cellar windows. The left end wall has similar cellar windows, but at ground floor retains leaded 2-light mullioned windows with transoms and labels, and at first floor has 3-light mullioned windows. This wall forms a projection on the right of an earlier front. The left end of the earlier front is gabled and retains mullioned windows of 4 and 2 lights at ground floor and in the gable. At first floor, and throughout both floors of the 2-window linking section, are 12-pane sashes, with a stone-architraved doorway between the middle bays. The parapet of the middle section is a later addition.

Set back to the left of the gabled bay is a late 17th-century kitchen wing with a large early multi-pane sash and a matching opening incorporating a wide panelled door. The gable wall retains a small mullioned window and a blocked oven opening. A stone-architraved gateway is attached to the left.

The rear of the earlier range has a gabled projection bearing a bellcote, with further mullioned windows and some sashes in the kitchen wing. The rear of the taller range has mullioned windows to the cellars and to a rectangular stair projection which rises above the parapet. Three small roof dormers have triangular pediments.

A high wall extends from the end of the range to enclose one side of the courtyard. It forms the rear of 3 small 17th and 18th-century outbuildings and includes a mullioned window.

The interior of the earlier range includes a bolection-mould panelled room with a large contemporary surround over an earlier stone fireplace. The later range contains a fielded-panelled room and an open-string stair with column balusters and a ramped handrail. A fine drawing room features large-panelled walls, an elaborate cornice, a triangular-pedimented eared doorcase, and a Rococo fireplace with a large broken-pedimented overmantel incorporating a painting of the Thames in London flanked by scrolls. A cast-iron fireback is inscribed "WR/1738", and in a lower cellar is the date 1737. Thomas Rollinson was High Sheriff in 1766, and the drawing-room decoration may date to approximately that period.

Major General Sir Henry Rawlinson, Baronet, the renowned Assyriologist, was born in the house, commemorated by a plaque.