Widcombe Manor And Cottage

Widcombe Manor and Cottage

A large detached house in its own grounds on the west side of Church Street, Widcombe, built around 1727 for Philip Bennet II, possibly by Nathaniel Ireson of Wincanton. The house may represent a remodelling of an earlier structure dating from around 1680–90, built by Scarborough Chapman, with design input for the front facade from Richard Jones in 1725–26.

The building is constructed in limestone ashlar with stone slate roofs, though the internal roof slopes are finished in slate. The plan is L-shaped, with a main range and an extended garden frontage incorporating a large full-height bay. The plain hipped end adjacent to Church Street faces the Church of St Thomas. A rear courtyard with the attached Widcombe Cottage completes the composition.

The house presents as a baroque mansion of considerable grandeur, set at the bottom of a sweeping approach and forming part of the landscape view created when Prior Park was developed a few years later. The entrance front to the south has two storeys, an attic, and a basement. It is dominated by a centrally placed brought-forward feature with a radial elliptical oculus with swags, set within a moulded closed pediment. This opens out to form a Palladian window, with flanking nine-pane windows having arched radial heads. Below sits a glazed door in a Doric doorcase with triglyph frieze and closed segmental pediment, flanked by arched eight-pane windows with intersecting bars.

The entrance front is composed of two, three, and two bays. Deep twelve-pane sashes are set in moulded architraves with prominent embellished keystones and bracketed sills at first-floor level. Two small twelve-pane pedimented dormers sit above. The basement has heads of sashes visible at a channelled level rising to a moulded lower sill, which serves as the base to paired fluted Ionic pilasters at each end and at the centre unit, also channelled. A full entablature with modillion cornice runs across, with a parapet featuring open balustrades above the windows and terminal urns. Above the outermost pilasters are richly carved armorial cartouches set to the cornice. The roof is hipped and returned with an inner valley.

The main garden facade repeats the detailing of the front, with doubled quoin pilasters and twelve-pane sashes either side of a bold canted bay with single pilasters and eight-pane sashes to each facet. To the left, set slightly back, are a further two bays with two dormers above paired twelve-pane sashes.

The return opposite the church is plain, with two twelve-pane dormers. The right-hand end features a wall in fine ashlar, while the remainder is dressed square masonry to a straight joint. Terminal urns crown the parapet, and a large two-stage ashlar stack stands at the corner. The main range returns with two further dormers and a ridge stack, above large twelve-pane sashes in plain reveals. This arm of the L contains two dormers above a flat-roofed extension with a small oculus and inserted mezzanine light, flanked by a blind light and a smaller margin-pane sash, set over a colonnade on square piers at ground floor. The wing has a deep end stack and ridge stack. A later 18th-century double hipped range, also with a stack, is attached at the lower level to the outer end.

The main range connects via a high boundary wall swept to the corner of Widcombe Cottage, which has an ashlar front, coursed rubble outer gable end, and slate roof. The cottage's north front features two twelve-pane sashes at each floor with a stone eaves mould. The street gable end has a two-stage ashlar stack. The gable extends left to a hipped end with a fielded six-panel door in pilasters and cornice. To the right, the wall ramps down to a short horizontal section terminating in a pair of square gatepiers with plank gates.

The interior was recorded by the Bath Preservation Trust in 1989. The hall retains original panelling in Queen Anne style, which may predate the current house, along with a white marble diamond-patterned floor and two arched sash windows flanking the front door. A wooden dog-leg staircase with three balusters per tread features carved and twisted wooden balusters. The passage to the kitchen was extended widthwise in 1996 to create an indoor garden on the courtyard side. The drawing room contains a fine grey marble fireplace decorated with vine motifs and a central reclining figure with goats. The dining room's original mantlepiece was replaced with a black marbled surround with white streaks in 1996. The library floor was tiled in leather by previous owners, who also lined the walls with copper, now overlaid with plasterboard; the original marble grey and white chimneypiece survives.

The half landing on the first floor features an oval ceiling with plaster vine leaves and a central ceiling rose, with panelled walls painted above the dado in stained and varnished finish. The floor displays a lozenge-shaped inlaid pattern. The main landing and passage have a vaulted ceiling with panelling and a Venetian window with wide mullions to two outer windows, partially concealed. The upstairs drawing room was converted from a bedroom in 1996, when its fireplace was reinstalled and two simulated marble pillars erected either side of the bay window; a small side window was blocked up from inside. The former dressing room and bathroom have been dismantled to form a single room. A bedroom to the left of the landing has an oval window over its door, painted wooden panelled walls, and a grey and white marble fireplace. A similar fireplace appears in the adjoining bathroom. The basement below the drawing room is now a billiard room; its former tongue and grooved panelling has been removed. The house was substantially redecorated in 1996–97, with all brass trimlocks and filigree finger plates replaced with plain brass door knobs. A geometrical pattern on the half landing echoes a sun motif in the forecourt.

An eight-pointed sun design stretches across the forecourt directly in front of the main door. This motif is considered too rustic for an 18th-century Palladian mansion and may have decorated the earlier house. The sun was a symbol of Scarborough Chapman's father, Henry, whose principal inn was the Sonne.