Eastleigh Manor House, Including Ha Ha To Front On South And East Sides

Eastleigh Manor House is a Grade II* listed manor house with associated ha-ha walls to the front on the south and east sides.

The building is a stone rubble construction with ashlar dressings, dating from the late 15th or early 16th century and remodelled in the late 16th or early 17th century and again around 1800. It has a bitumenised scantle slate roof to the rear and a slate roof to the front, hipped at the left end. The chimneys include a lateral rear hall stack with tapered cap, stone weatherings and brick shaft; an axial stone rubble stack with tapered cap and drip; and a brick ridge stack to the rear left-hand wing.

The complex plan developed through successive alterations, with limited access to the main roofspace preventing full structural assessment. The original late 15th or early 16th century core probably comprised a hall and the present entrance hall. In the late 16th or early 17th century, a wing was added to the rear of the hall and the front range was extended left and again to the rear by a further wing, creating an overall three-sided rear courtyard plan. The front range features single large rooms to each side of a wide entrance hall. Around 1800, the house was refashioned with gothick fenestration and features to create more symmetrical east and south facades. In the 19th century, an additional central rear wing was built, infilling part of the courtyard.

The house is two storeys with a five-window range to the front. Two openings to the left and one to the right are infilled and painted to resemble intersecting glazing bars. The remaining fenestration features original gothick style sashes with intersecting glazing bars. A central Tuscan porch has timber columns and pilasters with a two-panelled door, the upper part glazed in similar style. The two windows on each floor to the right retain original late 15th or 16th century stone reveals with elaborate hollow-ogee-casement moulded surrounds and dressed stone relieving arches. Fine 16th century stone mullion windows at the right gable end have three lights above and a ground floor of four lights with similarly moulded surrounds and cusped ogee headed arches to the lights, with quatrefoil and mouchette decoration in the spandrels.

The south side has a six-window range of gothick sashes with intersecting glazing bars and stone voussoirs, except at the left end which is blind. Four similar ground floor sashes are present with a pointed arched door to the left with cover strips, and two blind windows to the left. Extending from the left end of the south side and to the front right end of the east side are courtyard walls with castellated parapets. The south side wall has three tall pointed arched plastered niches and a gothick pointed arched door; the east side has a similar door flanked by niches.

The interior retains features from each successive remodelling. The hall has a hollow-moulded granite fireplace surround and a trabeated ceiling with an elaborate roll flanked by hollow-ogee hollow moulded ceiling beams forming six fields. Late medieval stained glass survives in the gable end mullion window. The diamond leaded cames to the upper part feature each pane decorated with various hunt scenes, fleur-de-lis and other motifs, above four roundels containing heraldic shields with small painted arms below bearing a Berry/Lambert crest.

Wide chamfered ceiling beams are present in the rear wings, with a doorway to the rear courtyard featuring a sunk chamfer and scroll-stopped surround and an original three-plank door. Much of the joinery from the circa 1800 remodelling remains intact, including two- and six-panelled doors. A massive kitchen fireplace lintel extends the entire width of the left-hand rear service wing (the stack since demolished), heavily smoke-blackened.

The upper floor of the rear right-hand wing has a four-centred arched doorway with hollow moulded surround and three-plank door and cover strips at the gable end, suggesting this wing formerly extended eastwards. The roof structure over this rear wing consists of two archbraced trusses with short curved feet, two tiers of trenched purlins, chamfers to the soffit of the archbracing to the morticed and tenoned collars, and a lower tier of curved windbracing surviving to three bays on the south side and two bays on the north side. The structure over the hall is certainly late medieval, with elaborately moulded feet of the principals supported on moulded timber corbels. No access to the roofspace of the front range is available.

This is an exceptionally fine house with high quality features surviving from each successive remodelling.