Manor House

Manor House, Ascott-under-Wychwood (Ascott d'Oyley)

This manor house has origins in the 13th century, with fragments of a 12th-century keep visible to one side. The building was largely rebuilt and extended during the 16th and 17th centuries. It is constructed of rubble stone with timber lintels and Cotswold stone roofs.

The house has an irregular plan organised around a screens passage, forming basically an 'L' shape with porches to north and south and two stair turret projections to the north—one at an angle with the west wing, the other to the east or centre bay. It is roughly six bays across and two storeys high, with two sets of square chimneys with conjoined stacks. The gabled form is uneven and complex, particularly on the north and south faces.

The north entrance front features Cotswold gables with an irregular disposition. A strong vertical break occurs to the right of centre beside a wide dormer gable. An oak mullion window with ferramenta sits to the right of the entrance. The right-hand wing is domestic in character, projecting with lean-tos to the east. Its gable end to the north has irregular strings and pigeon-nesting holes. The west return has four windows with chamfered oak mullions.

The south (garden) front has a large gable to the left, three irregular dormer gables, and a roughly central two-storey gabled porch. Windows are of 20th-century date, consisting of two, three and four-light casement windows, with a secondary door to the left. The porch contains a front window to side entries and masks a significant door of around 1600 with urn stops to the doorcase, retaining its drawbar and associated furniture. A clasping buttress stands to the right. A lower angle-storey scullery projection with a hipped L-plan nib (possibly a privy) projects downslope, and another nib to the left of the left-hand gable was probably also a privy.

Interior features are numerous and significant. Two probably 17th-century newel stairs are present. The most important feature is a large early 13th-century window surround incorporated into the east gable end, with clasping buttresses and chamfered footings. This represents part of the original medieval structure. The medieval arrangement was altered in the early 16th century when the east bay was floored and chimneys inserted into what probably became the parlour end. The wooden doorcase with urn stops and the chamfer stops to the beams on each floor appear to date from the later 16th century. Stairs off to the north give access to the solar, which contains a Tudor arch fireplace that was moved here from the west end of the house.

The house may have been wholly re-roofed in the 16th century, with the central portion possibly still functioning as an open hall—smoke blackening to the trusses suggests this. The wind bracing is scanty and the timbers of small dimension, suggesting a later date and the retention of trusses after two fires. The room off the cross passage has Jacobean panelling with puzzling joists. The buttery screen (skeletal at the time of resurvey) has the usual three entries. Fireplaces at the west end have inglenooks and wide bread ovens on the ground floor with a wide flue. The doorway between the west bay and the wing projecting to the north has a wooden segmental lintel which may have been retained from an earlier arrangement. The projecting wing was still coated in raddle at the time of resurvey and incorporated apple-stores and a former cheese room.

The house stands within the bailey of Ascott d'Oyley castle, built circa 1129–50 and excavated in 1946. The excavation is documented in the Antiquaries Journal, Volume XXXIX (July–October 1959, nos 3 and 4), in a report by Jope and Threlfall.