Manor Farmhouse Including Garden Boundary Wall To North-West

Manor Farmhouse

A substantial farmhouse of mixed date, combining a 17th-century rear wing with a front block added in 1774. The building was considerably modernised in the late 20th century and suffered fire damage to the front block in the early 1980s.

The structure consists of two storeys. The front block has small ashlar stone walls, while the rear wing is of rubble construction. The roof is slate, half-hipped at either end. Three large projecting stone lateral stacks stand at the rear, topped with late 20th-century brick shafts.

The front elevation presents a symmetrical three-window facade with a central door. The ground-floor windows are early 19th-century 16-pane sashes with narrow glazing bars and no horns (the glass was replaced following the fire). The first-floor windows are 20th-century facsimiles, which are not as tall as the originals. All windows have flat stone arches. The 19th-century door features flush panels and a rectangular fanlight above. An original porch hood, supported on wooden brackets with a small dentilled cornice, crowns the doorway. Above the door is a plaque inscribed 'I.T. 1774', referring to one of the Tozers, the Lords of the Manor.

The rear wing retains much of its original interior arrangement. Both plank and muntin screens survive, displaying 17th-century characteristics with beaded edges to the muntins and a cranked head doorway into the hall. The joists throughout are also beaded. The hall contains a cross beam with bar and hollow step stops and beaded joists. Its fireplace has a chamfered timber lintel with indistinct stops, cut away at the centre. The lower room has two identical cross beams and matching joists. A newel staircase with renewed wooden treads stands at the rear of the hall.

The 1774 front block originally contained a central entrance hall with heated rooms on either side, each served by the rear lateral stacks. The rear wing was at this time relegated to service purposes. Few original fittings survive in the front block due to the fire damage and later modernisation, though panelled shutters in the left-hand room likely date from an early 19th-century updating.

A late 20th-century extension has been added behind the front block, with a contemporary conservatory to its left.

The listing includes a rubble boundary wall to the north-west of the house, enclosing the forecourt on three sides. It incorporates a mounting block on the left-hand side near the house, topped with a small wrought iron gate at a gap in the wall. A wrought iron gate of similar character stands at the centre of the front wall bordering the road.

This was an important house at both main building stages, with good quality features surviving from each period. Although the fire of the early 1980s destroyed much of the joinery likely to have existed in the 18th-century part, the imposing facade of the 1774 block remains virtually unaltered and forms an important feature of the main village street.