Bradley Manor

Bradley Manor is a remarkably complete medieval manor house, early 13th century in origin, remodelled for Richard and Joan Yarde after 1402, with a late 15th-century extension and later alterations, principally in the 19th century.

Construction and Materials

The building has limewashed roughcast over local limestone rubble walls and Cornish slate roofs (originally local slate). Stacks rise at the valleys flanking the centre, at the gable ends of the rear block, and on the slope and ridge of the rear wings.

Plan and Development

The house has an L-shaped plan resulting from several building phases. The original 13th-century hall-house to the south was altered and retained as part of a rear left wing when the main early 15th-century house was built. This original structure was a two-storey building with an upper hall, approached by an external stair, and was extended westward in the late 15th century to create a large upper chamber.

The early 15th-century work comprises a through-passage hall with a solar to the right (north), a projecting service end and two-storey porch to the left. A chapel, consecrated in 1428, projects to the north-east. The porch and chapel were connected in the late 15th century by a passage forming a late 15th-century front. A 17th-century service wing projects southward from the rear-left (south-west) corner of the south wing.

Exterior

The building has two storeys. The late 15th-century east front extends five windows in width with leaded windows and five uneven forward-facing gables. The gable to the left, altered in the late 19th century, is set back; the chapel to the right projects forward. Behind these, the long roofline of the early 15th-century hall is visible.

The chapel features a hoodmould over a three-light window with panel tracery. Its left return has two two-light cinquefoil-headed windows under flat-arched hoodmoulds. The other gables, articulated by offset buttresses, have original mullioned and transomed oriel windows of two and three cinquefoil lights with ogee arches to the upper panels. The hoodmoulds have mask stops representing symbols of the four Evangelists (traces of early bright red and green paint were discovered and some are restored), with late 19th-century castellation above.

The right-hand gable has a smoothly-corbelled rectangular two-light oriel window supported by a central offset buttress. Below are two plain two-light windows flanking the buttress, with similar hoodmoulds and low transoms. The gable to the right-of-centre, slightly wider, has a central buttress supporting a three-light oriel window set in a narrow canted bay. To its left is a small single-light window with a plain label mould. To the right is a stack at the valley; at ground-floor level to the right is a two-light window similar to that of the oriel, while to the left are pointed granite arches to the porch with the original door bearing a ring handle. The left side of the porch has a similar arch to the former service end.

The gable to the left-of-centre has a two-light oriel window in a rectangular bay supported by an inverted triangle springing from a central foliate corbel with a plain shield to the front. Simple brackets sit below the moulded sill with circular and square bosses to the coved lower edge. A two-light window below has an ornamental band under the hoodmould and grotesque mask stops. The left-hand (south) gable to the service end, reconstructed in the 19th century, has an oriel window similar to that of the right-hand gable, with a plain four-light window directly below it.

The rear (west) elevation, altered in the 19th century, has a long lateral roof to the hall with a lower hip-roofed projection to the left. There is a hip-roofed half-dormer to a tall four-light window over a horizontal nine-light window, both lighting the upper end of the hall. A central single-storey canted bay with three lights to each facet has a hipped roof rising to the eaves. The pointed-arched doorway to the rear of the through passage is positioned to the left of the gabled two-storey service end, which has two-light windows to the right on each floor, the ground-floor window having a hoodmould.

The rear wing incorporating the 13th-century building projects westward. Its four-window north side in the rear courtyard dates from the early 19th century. The gabled west end has a two-storey 19th-century canted bay with a stable range extending to the right. The north elevation has first-floor two-light windows at eaves level; ground-floor two-light windows have hoodmoulds. The 17th-century service wing running north-south has a wide segmental arch flanked by blind four-light mullioned and transomed windows and other smaller windows.

Interior

The east end of the 13th-century house was rebuilt as a kitchen (the left-hand gable). It has four rough crossbeams. In the south wall is a massive fireplace of three roughly-dressed granite slabs that shares a flue with a brushwood oven to the left.

The unheated service room to the south, left of the porch and hall, has three chamfered crossbeams with run-out stops resting on stone corbels. There were formerly three entrances; two remain, one from the south side of the porch and another just inside the porch into the screens passage. The panelled screen to the right is 17th-century, repositioned from the former Mermaid Inn at Ashburton. The west end of the passage has a similar granite arch; doors at each end have restored wooden bolts.

The great hall is the full height of the house. It has three purlins to each side of a simple early 15th-century five-bay arch-braced collar beam roof on a decorative wallplate, once painted red and yellow and decorated at the foot of each truss with a small carving. Some colour on the wallplate remains. Arms of Yarde and Ferrers appear in the north-east corner. At the centre of the east wall is a fireplace similar to that of the kitchen. At the north-east end is a wide pointed arch to the former bay window at the upper end, of which two carved capitals to the impost remain, now filled with a richly-carved wooden screen of circa 1530-40 with linenfold to the base and arabesques to the top, a door to the ante-chapel on the east front, and a 20th-century tympanum. Painted on the upper part of the north wall is the upper part of an Elizabethan coat of arms.

Beyond the hall is the parlour and solar (unseen), extended by one bay into the hall in the late 16th century, projecting into the hall with Tudor arms on the dividing wall. It has a chimney in the north wall, a window seat under a nine-light window, and a winding stair to the solar. The solar is lit by a half-dormer, both now altered.

The early 15th-century chapel to the north-east has a plastered wagon roof with significant bosses at the intersection of the ribs including the arms of Yarde and Ferrers. Flanking the three-light panel-traceried east window are two high granite corbels for statues or candles. There is an early 15th-century west window, formerly an external window to the parlour. The front half of the freestone top of the rubblestone altar was found serving as a gate post and recovered in 1927.

The upper floor of the west wing, the former house, was extended in the late 15th century to make a large upper chamber approximately 13 metres long. It has an arch-braced collar-beam roof with wind braces below the purlins. Evidence survives for remarkable late 15th-century decorative schemes: the restored east end is stencilled with black fleur-de-lys on a white ground; on the east wall is an unusual sacred monogram IHS with symbols of the Passion; on the south wall is a painted striped curtain.

The room to the east was richly appointed in the late 17th century. It has a very fine coved ceiling ornamented with realistic fruit, flowers, swags and large shells above the cornice, full-height bolection-moulded panels flanking a cyma-moulded panel, two two-panel doors, and a fireplace with overmantel.

The room in the south-east corner has an early 17th-century grand plaster armorial overmantel with a carved oak surround on the south wall. An early 19th-century corridor on two floors, with stairs, was added to the east side of the rear wing. At first-floor level are two pointed-arched doors with intersecting panelling to the top and two rows of four pointed-arched panels below.

Bradley Manor represents a remarkably complete medieval manor house, including evidence for late medieval decorative schemes.