The Great Kitchen Approximately 40 Metres South Of Harcourt House

The Great Kitchen, located approximately 40 metres south of Harcourt House, dates back to around 1485, with possible earlier origins. It is constructed from coursed limestone rubble and features a conical stone slate roof topped with a lead griffin. The kitchen is designed as a square tower that is open to the roof. The front of the tower has a hood mould over three 15th-century two-light trefoil-headed windows. There are gargoyles along the cornice beneath a crenellated parapet, and a stair turret in the left corner has slit lights and a similar parapet. The left side has offset buttresses, while the rear wall displays hood moulds over two 15th-century two-light trefoil-headed windows and a wide blocked 4-centred arched doorway. Access is now through a 15th-century doorway in the rear wall of the Manor Farmhouse.

Inside, the left side wall contains three ovens, one featuring a medieval door, an aumbry, and a 15th-century plank door with decorative iron hinges leading to stone newel stairs. The opposite wall has two screen walls that flank spaces for two fires, with smoke escaping through two rows of six pointed louvred vents in each bay, located under the eaves of the roof and regulated from a passage behind the battlements. Squinches support an octagonal structure that holds the roof, with head corbels in each corner supporting arch-braced squinch arches featuring traceried spandrels and eight arched ribs converging at the apex. The kitchen has three tiers of arch bracing to the purlins and is recognized as one of the finest medieval kitchens still in existence. It was formerly attached to the service end of the medieval manor house, which was demolished around 1750.