Field Place

Field Place is a mansion of exceptional historic and architectural importance, built in two main sections spanning from the medieval period to 1678, set on three sides of a courtyard.

The earliest part of the house is the east wing, an open hall roughly contemporary with the earliest documentary records of the estate dating to 1251. This medieval core is constructed as an oak-framed building clad in stone with stone galleting and Horsham slab roofs. The south wing dates from the mid 14th century and the north wing from the late 14th century, rising to one or two storeys with mainly casement windows. The hall features a massive stone external chimneystack from the 16th century with a brick stack above. An early 16th-century staircase vice occupies the courtyard, while the main doorway and chimney stacks on the north wing are also of similar date.

The west wing, built in 1678, now contains the principal rooms. It is constructed of brick in random bond on a stone base with ironstone galleting and a hipped Horsham slab roof. This section rises to two storeys with attics, displaying seven windows to the centre and two to a back projecting wing. The first floor contains twelve-pane sashes and the ground floor has twenty-seven or thirty-pane French windows. The wings feature round-headed niches on the inner ground-floor faces. A central pediment crowns the composition, with a wooden eaves cornice decorated with modillions and a brick stringcourse. The central doorcase is embellished with a cornice, blank panels, and brackets.

The interior of the east wing retains four crownposts from the original open hall, the two central ones octagonal, each with two head braces and two foot braces. The tie beams have lamb-tongue stops and the posts are jowled. The end crownpost was lifted and truncated; the Hall Chamber was occupied by Timothy Shelley and later by Percy Bysshe Shelley as a teenager.

The south wing contains a Little Dining Room on the ground floor with late 16th-century cross beams, a Jacobean overmantel with strapwork decoration, and a marble fireplace with bolection moulding. The upper floor preserves a late 16th-century door, old floorboards, and smoke-blackened rafters. The north wing retains some restored early 17th-century windows, though the roof was renewed in the 18th century.

The 1678 wing houses a staircase hall with an oak well staircase featuring turned balusters and a china cupboard. Two columns with Composite capitals support the space, and two doorcases of 1752 display Vitruvian Scroll and broken pediments. The Library contains a mid-18th-century fireplace with an overmantel featuring floral drops and an urn, together with three six-panelled doors adorned with Swansneck pediments, urns, swags, and paterae to the frieze. A dado rail runs throughout. The Drawing Room contains a most unusual late 17th-century marble fireplace with high relief female mask and drapery. The Oak Room features a bolection-moulded fireplace and panelling. The Dining Room displays a mid-18th-century fireplace with Greek Key inlaid marble design to the frieze, urn and swag panel, and Ionic five-eighth columns, accompanied by a dado rail and cornice. The cellars retain Horsham slab wine bins and game slabs.

A first-floor bedroom, the birthplace of Percy Bysshe Shelley, contains panelling, a dado rail, and a marble fireplace with an early 19th-century duck's nest firegrate. Another bedroom has a bolection-moulded fireplace and dado rail, whilst a third has a late 17th-century cornice. A further end bedroom features 1930s painted pine panelling. Three exceptional 1930s bathrooms with original fittings include one in imitation tortoiseshell, one in pink marble, and one with a silver leaf ceiling, along with a 19th-century 'thunderbox'. The roof dates from the late 17th century.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in the house on 4 August 1792 and spent his formative years there.