Sidbury Manor Including Conservatory And Screen Wall To West

Sidbury Manor is a large, two-storey and attic red brick country house, dating to 1879 and designed by David Brandon. It displays a restrained but successful free-handing of Jacobean and French Chateau motifs. The house possesses high-quality hamstone quoins, window dressings, and decorative carving. Features include a plinth, a band between storeys, a modillion cornice, a parapet with panels of turned balusters raised in a strapwork lunette, steeply pitched gable-end slate roofs, and finely carved neo-Tudor and Jacobean chimneys which are clustered together. Ball and mitre finials adorn the gables and parapet ends.

The east entrance front has a slightly asymmetrical arrangement of rectangular bays and a slender octagonal tower. Large mullioned and transomed windows are present, along with carved panelled aprons and strapwork decoration on the parapets. The upper register of the tower features elaborate stone panels, dog and griffin gargoyles, and a pointed leaded roof decorated with three finialed gablets, all topped by an ornate weathervane. A grand frontispiece entrance is stone-faced, with a shaped gable surmounted by a lion and finial. A first-floor window is flanked by strapped composite pilasters, an elaborate carved entablature, and strapwork with ball and spike finials. A large porch has paired pilasters with fluted bases and rosettes in the necking, along with 4-centred arched side windows. A heavy carved entablature, featuring a strapwork parapet, tops the porch, which contains a double-panelled and glazed door beneath a 4-centred moulded arch.

The southwest garden front is partially symmetrical, mirroring the eastern group of gabled bays, but with an additional bay to the west and a tower wing with a single-storey extension set back, including a large conservatory in a right angle. The fenestration is similar to the entrance front, with canted bays. Cornices are returned, and gables have stone coping and ball and mitre finials. An oriel window is present on the first floor west side, while the ground floor features a two-bay arcade to the south and west—using diamond block piers and plain piers with heavy foliate capitals supporting 4-centred arches. A similar arcade is repeated on the inside wall of the conservatory, which has a stone-faced front featuring large mullioned and transomed windows articulated by pilasters and a strapwork parapet. The conservatory has a glazed roof supported by cast iron columns with good foliate capitals inside.

The tower is square with a steep pitch hipped French roof, ornamental guard rails around the top, and a weathervane. The west end of the single-storey extension has a large canted bay, with the strapwork parapet carried over from the conservatory. A brick screen wall extends to the west, featuring a coping. A Tuscan columned doorway is present, along with a dentil cornice to the entablature and mitre finials on the blocking course.

The interior includes a full-height staircase hall with an arcade on the ground floor and two sides of the first floor. A two-flight oak staircase is characterized by finely carved strapwork balustrade and a coved, compartmented ceiling. The library features finely carved oak bookcases with niches surmounted by urns. Sidbury Manor is situated within a fine park to the northwest of the village.