Nether Lypiatt Manor Including Forecourt Walls,Gateways And Clairvoyee

Nether Lypiatt Manor is a grade I country house with forecourt walls, gateways and clairvoyée, built between 1710 and 1717 for Judge Charles Cox. The house was restored around 1920 by architect P. Morley Horder for C.W. Woodall.

The building is constructed in ashlar limestone with ashlar chimneys and a stone slate roof. It has a compact square plan, two storeys with a cellar and attic. The main elevations are five windows wide. Originally all windows were stone cross-windows, and these survive on the centre windows of the south front and across the entire north elevation. All other windows are later 18th-century 18-pane sashes with moulded architraves. The cellar has 2-light mullioned casements also with moulded architraves.

Central doorways are positioned on the west side and formerly on the east side as well. The east doorway is now fitted with a small-pane fixed light. The west doorway is sheltered by a later 18th-century segmental pedimented porch mounted on fluted pedestal-based Ionic columns, with slightly splayed stone steps flanked by low side walls terminated by similar pedestals. The house features alternating rusticated quoins, deep moulded coved eaves with projections rising from the upper floor windows, and a boldly sprocketed hipped roof carrying two hipped dormers to each side with leaded casements. Three chimneys are panelled with moulded caps—taller examples at the centre and eaves-mounted versions on the north and south sides, the latter having round arched panels to their side faces.

Two original single-storey hipped-roofed wings project forward from the south front, attached at the corners but not internally accessible from the house. A similar wing added in 1931 balances the west front.

The forecourt is enclosed by garden walls running forward to form an inner courtyard to the west, bounded by a clairvoyée with a central gateway. The main gate piers have a central pilaster strip, moulded plinth and top, crowned with fine gadrooned urn finials; smaller screen piers have ball finials and stand on a base wall. The main gates, said to be by Warren, feature a scrolled overthrow and simple scrollwork, with plain spear-topped railings completing the screen. An outer courtyard is entered through opposed gateways forming a north-south axis, with piers topped by ball finials. The outer courtyard walls continue forward to the road line, returning north and south; the north section includes a doorway with keyed architraves and a plank door.

The interior features fine bolection-moulded chestnut panelling to the entrance hall with panelled pedestal-mounted pilasters. An elaborately carved Baroque fireplace, probably inserted around 1730, is a notable feature. Many rooms retain similar, though simpler, panelling and stone bolection-moulded fireplaces. Some more elaborate late 18th-century fireplaces are present, with the drawing room fireplace being particularly outstanding.

The main staircase is of oak and elm, starting as a dog-leg in plan but becoming an open well type by the time it reaches the attic due to the narrowing of the flights. The staircase has a moulded and swept handrail with three turned balusters per tread and bolection-moulded dado panelling. On each landing, principal rooms are reached through round timber-panelled archways.

This building replaced an earlier manor house that was entirely demolished. The property is extensively illustrated and described in Country Life articles dated 24th March to 7th April 1923 and 19th to 26th May 1934, and is referenced in several scholarly works including M. Girouard's Life in the English Country House (1978) and D. Verey's Gloucestershire: The Cotswolds (1979).