The Old Manor

The Old Manor is a former farmhouse dating from the late 15th to early 16th century, with major improvements made in the later 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. Since then it has undergone only superficial modernisation. The walls are primarily plastered cob on local stone rubble footings, but the publicly visible elevations have been rebuilt or refaced with local handmade brick laid in Flemish bond with decorative burnt headers, also on low stone rubble footings. The chimneys are brick and stone topped with 19th-century brick, and the roof is thatched.

The building is L-shaped in plan. The main block faces south and originally had a four-room-and-through-passage layout with a former carriageway through the right (east) end. At the left (west) end is a small unheated inner room, now used as an office. Adjacent to this is the former hall, now the sitting room, heated by a front lateral stack. This stack projects from the left end whilst the rest of the front elevation is flush with its face. Next comes the passage, followed by the dining room which has the main staircase behind it. The dining room has an axial stack backing onto the kitchen to the right, which itself has an axial stack backing onto the carriageway at that end. The passage extends back through outshots across the rear to the right. To the left is a doorway leading to the rear wing, which projects at right angles from the rear of the left end, overlapping the former hall and running along the lane. This doorway opens into a stair lobby, behind which are two rooms. The first is a large room heated by an axial stack backing onto the smaller end room. This layout is essentially that established in the early 18th century.

The house has a long and complex structural history. The historic core comprises the centre and left end of the main block. This was originally a three-room-and-through-passage plan hall house, open to the roof from end to end. It was divided by low partition screens and heated by an open hearth fire. Doorways in the passage indicate that the service end was divided in two by an axial wall, probably for service functions such as buttery, pantry and dairy. An inner room chamber which jettied into the upper end of the hall was provided at an early stage whilst the open fire was still in use. A newel turret projecting to the rear and accessed from the upper end of the hall appears to have been built at this time. Evidence for when the front stack was first inserted or when the lower end was first floored has been lost through rebuilding. The hall was floored over in the late 16th to early 17th century, at the same time as or slightly earlier than the rear parlour wing was built; plasterwork there is dated 1639.

In the late 17th century the house was refurbished. The service end was rebuilt as a dining room with a new stack, the adjacent staircase was constructed, and the publicly visible sides (the front and lane elevations) were rebuilt. Around the same time the rear wing parlour was altered and downgraded, with the main parlour apparently moving to the former hall. The kitchen at the east end was probably already functioning, though it is difficult to relate its development to the rest of the house. It has a smoke-blackened roof structure of different construction to the remainder, indicating another late medieval building stood alongside the main house. This, or part of it, was converted to a kitchen sometime between the mid-17th and early 18th century. In the late 17th to early 18th century the front of this section (overlapping part of the dining room) was rebuilt in brick and extended over a new carriageway past the end of the kitchen. The awkward straight join between the two sections of brickwork could indicate that this right section was secondary, if the earlier brick of the main house extended only as far as a high wall or front service block.

The house is of two storeys. The two phases of brickwork on the front are very similar and contain very similar original windows. The irregular four-window front has ground floor windows that are flat-faced mullion-and-transom windows under low segmental arches. A fifth ground floor casement at the right end is secondary and blocks a former doorway. The three first floor windows to the left are oak with ovolo-moulded mullions; the fourth is a flat-faced mullion window. All contain rectangular panes of leaded glass, some very old. The front passage doorway is left of centre and contains a 19th-century panelled door. The carriageway at the left end has a low segmental arch. The roof is hipped to the right and half-hipped to the left. The rear block includes several 17th-century oak-framed windows, most with chamfered mullions, though one on the first floor inner side has ogee-moulded mullions. The rear block roof is half-hipped.

The interior is of exceptional importance, containing high quality work from all building phases. There are oak plank-and-muntin screens on both sides of the passage and another at the upper end of the hall. All three are original low partition screens of large scantling. Those at either end of the hall have chamfered muntins with cut diagonal stops, and the doorways are four-centred arches. The lower passage screen is slightly different, with muntins having run-out stops and both doorways being shoulder-headed arches. At the upper end of the hall the inner room projects as a jetty. The joists and underside of the jetty and the screen below were painted in the mid to late 16th century, before the hall was floored. Although the faces of the muntins were later hacked back, the design is otherwise unusually well preserved and the ancient colours remain bright. It is an attractive and exuberant piece of rustic craftsmanship depicting bunches of flowers in a strapwork pattern. The cupboard in the back wall contains the lower steps of the early newel stair. The axial beam is chamfered with pyramid stops. The fireplace is brick and dates to the late 17th to early 18th century.

The dining room has a large brick fireplace with a plain oak lintel. The crossbeam is chamfered with scroll stops, and on the rear wall is a late 17th-century stair entrance formed as a timber round-headed arch with keyblock and a box cornice carried over a cupboard with shaped shelves. The staircase rises around a solid well and has square newel posts, a moulded flat handrail and turned balusters. The kitchen has a chamfered crossbeam with cut diagonal stops. The fireplace here is stone rubble including some dressed conglomerate blocks, with a chamfered oak lintel and a stone arch doorway to the oven. The rear block stair is missing its balustrade but is thought to be 18th or 19th century. The main downstairs room is relatively plain, with a boxed-in crossbeam and a brick fireplace with plain oak lintel that appears 18th century. However, the upper chamber (now divided) has a fine ornamental plasterwork ceiling with a single rib design featuring unusual moulded motifs. Both end walls have deep friezes with decorative panels including the date 1639 and a coat of arms. The crosswall to the stair includes an overlapping oak plank screen. The chamber over the hall retains the remains of a moulded plaster cornice. Throughout the house are some 17th-century chamfered oak doorways and several old doors.

The original roof survives virtually intact over the three-room-and-through-passage section of the main house. It is carried on a series of large scantling side-pegged jointed cruck trusses with hip crucks at each end (the inner room end one is missing). The whole roof structure is smoke-blackened from the original open hearth fire. Both the jetty crosswall and the infill of the truss over the lower passage screen are smoke-blackened on the hall side only. The two-bay roof over the kitchen is a different structure on a lower level, but it too is carried on a side-pegged jointed cruck truss and the structure is smoke-blackened from another open hearth fire. The rear wing roof is also carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses, but these are 17th century and clean.

The Old Manor is an exceptionally well-preserved multi-period house which has undergone minimal modernisation since the early 18th century. The present owner, Mr Dixon, has carefully repaired the structure and much of the detail since 1976. The house forms part of a picturesque group of listed buildings near the Church of St James.