Wooton Manor House

This is a manor house, dating back to the 16th century and possibly with even earlier origins. It was remodelled and extended in the 17th century and restored around 1970. The house is constructed of roughly coursed stone rubble, with some cob, and has slate roofs with gable ends. It features two stone rubble rear lateral stacks; one serving the heating parlour and having a brick shaft, the other, particularly massive, serving the hall and featuring a drip and tapered cap. A third lateral stone rubble stack with offsets and weatherings serves the rear of the kitchen wing.

The house has a complex plan, influenced by a rebuilding of the left gable end which suggests the loss of part of the original main range. The main range now has a cross-passage with a stair turret to the rear, and a two-story front porch. To the left of the porch is a single room, and to the right a large hall, the front wall of which appears to have been built out in the 17th century as a two-story gabled projection. A kitchen wing, possibly originally detached, is set at a right angle to the main range and connected by a short range, creating an overall L-shaped plan.

The main range has a four-window front, with 20th-century fenestration on the upper storey. Two three-light casements flank a two-light window above the doorway, which has a pair of half-glazed leaves and a carved crest of the Ayre family, added around 1970. A tall 20th-century three-light window is on the ground floor to the left, and a 17th-century three-light timber mullion window to the right. The hall projection has a 20th-century five-light casement above a tall six-light timber mullion window. The kitchen wing has a four-light mullion window on its upper storey (on its inner face), and a three-light and a four-light timber mullion window on its outer face. A three-light window with four-centred arches to the patterned leaded lights, inserted in the 1970s and brought from Eggerford House, is set into the left gable end.

Inside, a heavy studded door leads to a moulded inner porch; a cranked head surrounds the door between the hall and the cross-passage. A moulded timber lintel is above the hall fireplace. A section of panelling with fluted decoration to the top rail and a bench with carved fretwork ends are found in the upper end of the hall. Ornate plasterwork friezes, dating from the late 16th/early 17th centuries, are in the upper gallery and chamber over the hall. Two raised cruck trusses are over the parlour end, previously with two tiers of threaded purlins and morticed and tenoned collars. There is no visible smoke-blackening.