Marhayes Manor, Including Garden Area Wall Adjoining At North-East And Running Parallel To North Front

Marhayes Manor is a farmhouse, originally a manor house, with a stable block and a garden wall, dating back to approximately the early 17th century, with substantial rebuilding in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The early 17th-century sections are built of slatestone rubble, while the later sections are of Flemish bond brick with freestone dressings. The roofs are slate, hipped all around with a central valley, and the brick chimneys may have been reduced in height.

The house is arranged with a double-depth plan, featuring a corridor with opposed flights of stairs located centrally. A further entrance is on the north front, with steps leading to a first-floor doorway, which has been altered. Evidence suggests this is a truncated or partially completed survival of a late 17th-century building intended to be three storeys high, with ground floor service rooms.

The east front has a symmetrical arrangement of five two-storey windows. It features long and short rusticated quoins. A freestone architrave frames a 20th-century entrance door. The ground floor windows are presumed replacements, consisting of three-light casements with small panes and glazing bars, set within moulded brick soldier arches. First-floor windows are two-light casements with wooden mullions and transoms. Alternate windows have freestone architraves and stone sills; one first-floor window on the left retains its original arrangement of small leaded panes.

The south front shows slatestone rubble on the ground floor, with a brick platband marking the first-floor level, then brick above and below the eaves. A renewed three-light casement with glazing bars occupies the ground floor on the left. The ground floor window on the right is a two-light freestone mullioned window, slightly recessed and splayed. A 12-pane sash window is on the first floor to the left, set lower than the other window openings, and one window is blocked. One ground floor room on the right retains a large fireplace and the remains of an oven, along with coving above the fireplace. A large dairy, located in the ground floor room to the rear right, has a stud and brick wall, a slate floor, and slate-topped benches. A four-centred chamfered granite doorway is found on the west front. A first-floor room on the right has an elaborate decorated plaster ceiling in high relief, depicting putti, birds, fruit, and flowers, with some elements supported on wires. It also features a coving above the fireplace and a deep, bolection-moulded skirting board. A first-floor room on the left has more restrained plaster decoration and remains of plaster panelling on the walls. A 17th-century stable block adjoining the house on the southwest retains a two-light wooden mullioned window. The late 17th-century Flemish bond garden wall runs to the east and north of the north garden front. An aluminium flue is visible on the northwest corner of the houses.

Marhayes is recorded as a Domesday Manor. Members of the Maris family of Marhays were involved in the endowment of Week St Mary Grammar School. The rebuilding of the house may be linked to the rise of John Rolle of Marhays, born in 1626, who was made a Knight of the Bath for his assistance in the restoration of Charles II.