Sheafhayne Manor Including Terraces On All Sides And Outbuildings Adjoining To North

Sheafhayne Manor is a substantial mansion and former manor house with probable late medieval origins, though the earliest visible work dates to the mid-to-late 16th century. The building is constructed from local stone and flint rubble with limestone and Hamstone detail, and features a slate roof with stone rubble chimneys, most topped with 19th and 20th-century brick, though a couple retain 19th-century limestone divided octagonal chimneyshafts.

The house is built to a large irregular T-plan, with the main block facing west-southwest. It developed from a 16th-century house with a two-room plan derived from the hall, passage and service end arrangement. The sitting room at the south end occupies the former service end and passage, with a gable-end stack inserted in the early 20th century. Next to it stands the hall with an axial stack. A two-storey porch serves the former passage front doorway, with a matching two-storey porch behind it leading to the back door in the hall. A one-room plan block to the rear of the service end was added in the late 19th to early 20th century. The main block continues northward with a room combining two former rooms, an unheated room, and a parlour with a front lateral stack. A parlour wing projects forward with its own projecting outer lateral stack. The main stair rises in the angle between the dining room in the main block and the principal parlour in the front wing. A service wing projects at right angles from the rear of the west end, beginning with the kitchen; this block was substantially refurbished and enlarged in the late 19th to early 20th century.

The house stands two storeys with disused attics. Its exterior is deliberately irregular, with long sides interrupted by porches, wings, extensions and turrets. All gables feature shaped kneelers and coping. Windows throughout are of limestone or Hamstone with ovolo-moulded mullions (except for the hollow-chamfered mullions of the front porch window), hoodmoulds, and rectangular panes of leaded glass; most date to the late 19th to early 20th century, though some are original. The front porch has a limestone Tudor arch, and the former passage front doorway retains its original oak Tudor arch with a studded plank door complete with coverstrips. The apex of the porch gable displays a pair of sundials, one positioned for morning and one for afternoon. All roofs are gable-ended. A bronze bell hangs above the north door to the service wing.

The interior, though rearranged in the late 19th to early 20th century, contains substantial 16th and 17th-century fabric and detail. The sitting room includes a length of probably 16th-century oak plank-and-muntin screen, now lining the solid crosswall between this room and the hall. An oak Tudor arch leads to the hall, which contains a large limestone ashlar fireplace with a chamfered oak beam, a fine nine-panel ceiling of richly-moulded intersecting beams, and small field oak panelling. The two rooms beyond the upper end of the hall have chamfered and step-stopped beams; the second parlour fireplace is Hamstone ashlar with a Tudor arch lintel. The kitchen has plain-chamfered crossbeams, and although its fireplace is blocked, the chamfered oak lintel is exposed. The main parlour is an exceptional room, featuring a Hamstone ashlar fireplace with a Tudor arch lintel (with another serving the chamber above), and lined throughout with oak small field panelling including a frieze of carved guilloche. Some chambers in the main block are similarly panelled and heated by small fireplaces. Although some panelling has been reset, it is genuine and of high quality; some doors remain hung on cockshead hinges with original catches.

Early roof structures survive principally in the main block. The hall, unheated room and second parlour are carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses with mortise-and-tenoned collars, designed to accommodate attic rooms with evidence for one dormer window. Two trusses are closed with wattle and daub and were plastered over; the surviving plaster above a small crank-headed doorway bears crude painted scrollwork suggesting a crown, which, if not 16th or 17th century, certainly appears so. The former service end roof is also carried on side-pegged jointed crucks, but these are early 17th century and feature pegged and spiked dovetail-shaped lap-jointed collars.

A ballroom was added in the late 19th to early 20th century beneath a terrace in the angle between the two wings, with the roof forming the entrance forecourt. Large windows on the south and east sides of the terrace open the room to the gardens, and a doorway in the south side provides further access. A parapet surrounds the forecourt, surmounted by a series of vases. The ballroom connects by stairs to both the main block and kitchen block, though it has now lost most of its fittings. Wine cellars lie beneath this level.

To the north of the kitchen wing stands a service courtyard enclosed on two sides by low service outbuildings. The stable block, parallel to the road at the north end, incorporates a stone plaque recording its erection in 1860 by Sir T T F E Drake. The gardens to the south and west were terraced in the late 19th to early 20th century with stone rubble walls and included a pergola.

Sheafhayne serves as the principal house of the Yarcombe Estate and is notable for its attractive appearance and the high-quality 16th and 17th-century craftsmanship it contains. The late 19th to early 20th-century refurbishment was executed in a Tudor style consistent with the original work, making it difficult to distinguish between phases, though the roof timbers show distinct mid-to-late 16th-century and early 17th-century phases. Despite this thorough later work, the house retains a substantial amount of its early fabric and character.