Garsdon Manor

Garsdon Manor is a manor house that dates back to the late 14th century, featuring an open hall range to the west and an early 17th-century addition that was restored after 1661, with further restorations and alterations made in the 19th and 20th centuries. The building is constructed from squared and coursed rubble, with flush rusticated dressed stone quoins, stone dressings, and stone slate roofs. It has tall paired ashlar stacks with moulded caps. The irregular L-shaped plan includes the 14th-century core range projecting to the west at the rear of the 17th-century block.

The south front displays a two-storey and attic, two-window 14th-century hall range on the left, with the two eastern bays masked, and an advanced three-storey, three-window 17th-century block. The windows in the 14th-century range are two-light 19th-century casements under cambered heads, and there are two hipped dormers. The 17th-century block features six-light ovolo-moulded cross-mullions. A circa 1840 doorway is located in the west end bay, featuring two round-headed lights. Moulded string courses run above the second and third storey windows, with a blocking course developing into a gable in each bay, and the roof is double-span. The east front has a range with two-light cavetto-moulded mullions and hood-moulds only on the upper floor.

Inside, the 14th-century four-bay open hall, now divided, retains its original butt-purlin, hammer-beam arched collar-truss roof structure with four-way kingposts and wind-braces. The Great Parlour on the first floor of the 17th-century block features a fine stone chimneypiece from around 1630, with coupled columned jambs and a carved over-mantel adorned with strapwork and caryatids. The plaster ceiling from the 1660s includes a moulded cornice and broad ribbed strapwork with tree motifs, with further identical plaster decoration in the first-floor room to the east.

Historically, the manor was owned by Richard Moody in the early 16th century and Sir Laurence Washington in the early 17th century. It passed by marriage in 1661 to Sir William Pargiter, whose rebus is depicted in the pear-tree decoration on the Great Parlour ceiling, featuring a partridge in a pear-tree.