Sherborne House

Sherborne House

A house built circa 1720, designed by Benjamin Bastard for Henry Seymour Portman. The staircase hall contains mural paintings by Sir James Thornhill. A late 16th-century rear north-west wing survives from an earlier building on the site. A 20th-century extension has been added. The building is constructed of rendered stone rubble and brick with stone dressings and slate roofs, with axial chimney stacks.

The main 1720 block is rectangular in plan, with a central hall flanked by parlours and the main staircase hall to the rear right, behind which lie the servants' stairs. Service rooms occupy the earlier wing to the rear, all that survives of the original house.

The south front of the main block is three storeys tall with seven windows. The centre breaks forward with a pedimented projection. It features a balustraded parapet, moulded stone cornice, rusticated quoins, and moulded stone window architraves with small keyblocks and cills. The second-floor windows have cambered heads. Sash windows with thick glazing bars are throughout. The central first-floor window is topped with a pediment on enriched console brackets. At ground level, a central rusticated portico with a round arch and keyblock is flanked by flat Doric pilasters with triglyphs above and a broken segmental pediment; a 20th-century glazed door occupies this opening. Moulded rainwater heads appear on the east and west sides. The three-bay east elevation has similar fenestration; the ground-floor left window is blind, while the right side has a tall stair window above a side entrance with moulded stone architrave, cambered head with keyblock, and a panelled glazed door. The two-bay west elevation is similarly fenestrated with the ground-floor right window blind. A brick rear wing set back to the left. A lower two-storey late 16th-century range projects from the north-west corner, built of stone rubble, partly rendered, with a steeply pitched Welsh slate roof with gabled ends. The front features some chamfered and ovolo-moulded two-light stone mullion windows. At the west gable end is a projecting brick ledge on stone brackets. The rear has ovolo-moulded two-light and three-light mullion-transom windows. At the rear (north) a large late 20th-century flat-roof wing extends to the left.

The interior contains a fine series of early 18th-century panelled rooms. The hall is lined with giant fluted pilasters and a triglyph frieze, and features a Victorian Jacobethan carved oak chimneypiece. Similar chimneypieces appear in the other ground-floor panelled rooms, though some rooms above retain original chimneypieces with their grates. The partition between the two rooms above the hall has been removed to form one large space. An early 18th-century closed-string back staircase features square newels, a moulded handrail, and turned balusters. The principal staircase is an open-well design with carved arabesques and marquetry tread ends, three turned balusters per tread, and fluted column newels with a moulded handrail ending in a carved finial. The stairwell contains fine Baroque paintings by Sir James Thornhill depicting the myth of Meleager and Atalanta with the hunt of the Calydonian boar, Diana on the ceiling, and grisaille paintings lower on the walls. The stairhall floor is of Purbeck marble. Brick vaulted cellars lie beneath. The late 16th-century rear wing features a panelled ceiling with moulded intersecting beams with bosses at the intersections carved with roses and ribbon-work. A chamfered door frame has its head removed. A recess in the very thick kitchen walls, with a moulded stone lintel and cill, is said to be a blocked oven. The first-floor room of the wing has its ceiling removed and now opens to an early 18th-century tenoned-purlin tie-beam and collar-truss roof, with collars halved and lapped to the principal rafters. The roof of the main block was not inspected.

William Charles Macready, the actor and theatre manager, lived here from 1851 to 1860, renting the house from the Earl of Digby. Charles Dickens stayed with Macready at Sherborne House in 1854.

Sherborne House is a handsome early Georgian mansion containing important murals by Sir James Thornhill.