Turleigh Manor

Turleigh Manor is a house dating from the late 17th to early 18th century, constructed of ashlar with a hipped stone slate roof. It has two square, corniced ashlar stacks. The house has a square plan with formal fronts in an early 18th-century style facing south and east, and a late 17th-century style front facing west.

The south and east fronts feature a modillion cornice and parapet, with a cornice incorporating a heavy pulvinated frieze above the ground floor and a moulded plinth. They contain twelve-pane sash windows in moulded architraves with moulded sills; the heads of the ground-floor windows break into the base of the cornice above. The south front has seven windows, with the centre windows closely spaced, and panelled double doors within an open-pedimented, bolection-moulded surround, topped with an urn in the pediment. The east front is similar, with four windows and two segmental-headed dormers with small panes. Some ground floor windows on both the south and east fronts have been lowered. The west front is of squared rubble with a moulded dripcourse and eaves cornice, which continues the bottom moulding of the main cornice on the south front. It has a five-window range of chamfered recessed two-light mullion-and-transom windows, and a central door within a bolection surround.

A one-and-a-half-storey kitchen is attached to the northwest angle. The north front is irregular but retains the cornice carried round. It features two ground-floor, 17th-century ovolo-moulded two-light mullion windows, a large tripartite stairlight, and a stone-fronted flat dormer with a recessed chamfered two-light mullion window.

The interior was altered in the 20th century but is said to contain a fine twisted baluster staircase and panelled rooms. It stands on land originally part of the Bradford parsonage, held by the Dean and Chapter of Bristol from 1542 to 1861. The house was occupied by the Barnes family from around 1548 to 1615, the Dicke family (clothiers) from 1615 to 1770, and subsequently by J. Curll (clothier) from 1670 to 1707, John Daw from 1707 to 1727, and John Thresher (clothier) from 1727, before passing by descent to Sir Bourchier Wrey around 1760 and then to Ann Atwood in 1811. During much of the 18th century, the house was tenanted, including by J. Baskerville (clothier) from 1733 to 1747. In 1747, it was described as a "very compleat well built house, with all necessary and convenient out-houses, dye-house, wool-lofts..." From 1775, Richard Atwood, of the Bath family of builders and architects, was a tenant and was noted as a friend of the statesman Edmund Burke, who is said to have visited. The Reverend W. Romaine purportedly wrote his 'Walk and Triumph of Faith' at Turleigh Manor in 1771.