The Manor House And Attached Garden Walls

The Manor House is a substantial early 17th-century manor house, with evidence of earlier construction dating back to the 16th century or even the late medieval period. It is located in the village of Melbury Bubb, Dorset. The house is built of coursed rubble-stone walls with dressed stone quoins, and has slate roofs with stone gable-copings. Brick stacks, rebuilt in the 19th and 20th centuries, are present on gable ends and on the rear wing gables. The building follows a small U-plan, with a main range and two rear wings.

The west front has a central front gable, which originally housed a lateral hall fireplace. A gabled porch with a ball finial stands centrally, with a small, gabled room with a ball finial to the south. There are six windows on the ground floor, featuring hollow-chamfered stone mullions with individual labels, arranged as 3, 1, 2, 1, 1, and 3 lights from north to south. These windows contain 20th-century metal casements with lead lights. First-floor windows have 3 and 4 lights. The front door, located on the north side of the porch, has a moulded door frame with a depressed-arch head; the door itself is a 17th-century plank door with strap hinges and studs. On the east side, the Hall features a six-light (3x3) stone mullion window. The rear wings have 2 storeys with stone mullion windows and 20th-century metal casements. A rear doorway has stone moulded jambs and a depressed-arch head.

The interior retains the original plan, consisting of a kitchen, a through-passage, a Hall, a Parlour, and rear ranges for service and sleeping accommodation. Flagstone floors are present throughout. The Hall, the central room, has plank-and-muntin partitions with beaded muntins and a flat face, dating to the 17th century. The fireplace on the front wall has moulded wood jambs set on stone bases and a corresponding moulded bressumer, all original to the 17th century although the jamb posts have been renewed. The ceiling has deep straight-chamfered beams and moulded cornices, painted. The Parlour has plank-and-muntin partitioning and a 17th-century fireplace with moulded stone jambs and a depressed-arch head, now partially blocked in. Two staircases exist; one in the north-east wing features heavy turned balusters and newels, also 17th century, while the other, at the south end of the front range, has plank-and-muntin casing with renewed treads. The roof construction at the north end of the main range reveals two trusses of jointed-cruck construction, with the remains of arch-bracing, suggestive of late medieval or 16th-century origins, and evidence of two sets of through-purlins. A doorway on the landing is a 20th-century addition. Upstairs, the partitioning is of 17th-century plank-and-muntin construction.

Attached to the east of the house are garden walls, approximately 7 metres north, 28 metres east, 23 metres south, and 28 metres returning to the south-east wing. These are coursed rubble-stone walls with ashlar stone copings, dating to the 17th century.