Bailiffscourt Hotel And Country Club

The Bailiffscourt Hotel and Country Club is a hotel and country club, originally a large country house, built between 1931 and 1935 by Amyas Phillips for Lord and Lady Moyne. Phillips, described as an "antiquarian" rather than an architect, designed the building in a late Medieval Cotswold style, constructed entirely from salvaged materials sourced from old buildings across the country.

The building is primarily of Somerset limestone with a Horsham stone slate roof and stone chimneystacks, arranged on a quadrangular plan. The main front is two storeys high, featuring stone round-headed windows on the first floor and a double window with a trefoliated head on the ground floor. Large buttresses and an external stone stack are present, with a two-light oak window rescued from a building near Muchelney Abbey positioned between them. An entrance archway, originally part of Holditch Priory, provides access to a C15 oak door leading to the entrance hall.

The left side return displays double cusped windows to the gable, alongside a series of cambered windows and buttresses. The rear elevation is L-shaped, incorporating two-, three-, and four-light mullioned windows with leaded lights and four external chimneystacks. An arched door-case leads to a four-plank door. The right side of the building houses domestic quarters, constructed of chequerwork flint and stone with two gables and mullioned windows. A return elevation on this side features three-light mullioned windows and a reused round-headed window.

Inside, a room to the right of the entrance hall features a deeply chamfered ceiling and a tall window seat. The large, L-shaped Dining Room boasts a very fine roll-moulded ceiling and an oak screen. A four-centred arched stone fireplace in the Dining Room was relocated from a building in Hitchin that was being demolished by the local authority. The principal bedroom on the first floor has a crown post roof, incorporating four crownposts—two salvaged from an older roof and two replicas created by Amyas Phillips. Numerous other examples of reused materials are incorporated throughout, including four-centred archways, C16 and C17 stone fireplaces and screens, although some screens appear to be constructed from old floorboards. This building represents a prominent example of the Inter War period trend of creating new houses from reclaimed materials and is documented in "The Last Country Homes" by Clive Aslet and in "Buildings of England: Sussex".