The Manor House And Barn

The Manor House and barn are a large early 17th-century house, possibly with earlier origins, located in Bidestone. The house is constructed of rubble stone with flush ashlar quoins and has stone-tiled roofs with moulded coped gables and ball finials. It features diagonally-set ashlar stacks. The building is square in plan and stands two storeys and an attic, with triple gabled fronts facing west and east. The windows are ovolo-moulded and have hoodmoulds with leaded light casements, many of which are part of a restoration following 1914 for F. Morley.

The south front has a single central gable with a two-light window and an armorial cartouche below. The main floors have a five-window range, with the windows alternate three and two lights. A renewed Tudor arched doorcase is set in a pedimented porch with swollen Tuscan columns. The west front has a paired stack on the ridge, a three-window range with two-light attic windows, three-light first floor windows and, on the ground floor, two early 18th-century eighteen-pane sash windows in architrave frames with cornice strips to the left, a central segmental arched doorway, and a four-light window with a king mullion to the right. The doorcase is bead-moulded with pilaster jambs and a keystone to the arch, with an ovolo-moulded single light on each side and a stone hood with a panelled soffit and scrolled brackets above. The east front has a similar three-window range, with paired stacks on the ridge, two-light attic windows, three-light first floor windows and ground floor four-light windows, also with king mullions. A plank door is set in an original Tudor arched surround with a hoodmould, and a Tuscan columned porch sits before it. The north side originally comprised two cross-gabled wings with triple stacks on the inner gables, but the centre has been filled in. It now has two-light attic windows, three-light first floor windows, a 20th-century centre window, and three 20th-century four-light windows with king mullions below.

Attached at the northeast corner is a gabled kitchen range, and at the southwest corner, linked by a 20th-century single-storey addition, is a stone-tiled barn with a datestone W M E 1705 (initials for W. and E. Mountjoy), which was converted to a ballroom around 1929. The barn has hipped cart entrances to the east and west and a lean-to on the east side. 20th-century alterations include large mullion and transom windows to the cart entrances and south end wall, a north end diagonal stack, and mullion windows to the lean-to's.

The interior features stone fireplaces and early 18th-century panelling in the southeast and northwest corner rooms. It retains two original stone Tudor archways to an east-west cross passage. Inserted 20th-century work includes steps to the southeast room and a fireplace in the barn said to have come from Manor Farmhouse. On the west front is a lead hopper head dated 1664.