Rodmarton Manor

RODMARTON MANOR

A large country house built between 1909 and 1926 for the Hon Claud Biddulph, designed by Ernest Barnsley and briefly supervised after his death by Sidney Barnsley. The house is a significant example of the Arts and Crafts movement, constructed entirely with locally obtained materials worked by hand by local craftsmen.

The building is constructed of coursed and dressed stone on an offset plinth with flush quoins, covered with a stone slate roof featuring coped gables and large grouped flues to scattered stacks, which are either diagonally-set squares or round and polygonal with decorative fillets. The main structure comprises a principal block with canted side wings of different lengths, partly built around a large circular grassed courtyard to the north. A smaller service range lies to the north-east, now converted to flats. The majority of the house is two storeys with an attic; the courtyard range is single storey with an attic.

The north front features a large central projecting gabled porch bay with a depressed Tudor-arch moulded doorway. Above the doorway is a stone monogram enclosed within a raised section of the string course, and a long 3-light stone mullion and transom window with 2 transoms. Two flanking gables stand on each side, with polygonal bays masking the angles where the building returns northward. A twisted string course runs along most of the north front above the first floor, while a straight offset string course runs along the main block above the ground floor. Windows throughout use stone mullions at attic level and mullion and transoms below, all ovolo-moulded with leaded iron casements.

The north-west wing contains a chapel with an open twin-arched loggia above to the west and a separate porch with a hipped roof and 4 steps up, the top step curved. This wing and the north-east wing are slightly lower than the central block. The north-east wing comprises 3 gabled bays with a central doorway featuring an arched hood, flanked by 2-light stone mullions as side lights and flanking canted bays. The former service wing to the east displays 2 steep gables facing the large grass entrance court, each with a louvred stone vent in its apex and stone mullion casements below.

The courtyard side to the east, formed as a U-shape with a south range and straight north range, is constructed mostly in rubble stone with flush quoins and represents the oldest part of the house. Both ranges have dormers. The south range features a small glazed lantern with a hipped roof and ball finial to its west arm. The north range has a large central gable with a lantern and dovecote perches in the gable above a large cambered timber lintel, flanked by open loggias each with a central wide cylindrical rubble stone column.

The south front of the main central block has 2 projecting end bays with fenestration similar to the north front, including ground floor windows with 2 transoms. Decorative lead rainwater pipes and hoppers with embossed animal and flower motifs, occasionally dated with initial B, are distributed throughout the building, possibly the work of F.W. Troup.

The interior is largely intact and contains all original fittings as well as numerous pieces of furniture by the Barnsley brothers, Ernest Gimson, Peter Waals and others. The house is widely featured in publications on the Arts and Crafts movement and articles in Country Life (volumes LXIX, 1931, and LXIV, 1978 — two articles by Clive Aslet).