Palace House

Palace House is a medium-sized country house incorporating a monastic gatehouse, situated on the Beaulieu Manor Estate. The core of the building dates to the mid-14th century as a gatehouse, which was converted into a hunting lodge around 1540 for Lord Wriothesley. Significant expansion and alteration occurred in the early 18th century, with the construction of a moat and turreted wall surrounding the site. Further restoration and enlargement followed in 1872 by A. Blomfield.

The house is constructed of coursed rubble stone with stone dressings, and has an old plain tile roof. The plan incorporates the original gatehouse, which is two storeys and an attic in height, and a later range built on walls above the moat. Blomfield added a four-storey stair tower to one corner and a single-storey addition with a projecting porch over the moat, and a lower projecting wing with a 16th-century turret on its junction. Behind the gatehouse, Blomfield built a long, double-pile range with crosswings at either end, which projects three bays beyond the stair tower against the gatehouse.

The south elevation features the gatehouse on the left and the 19th-century main range set back on the right. The gatehouse has a central, two-order pointed archway, now filled with a 19th-century hipped stone-roofed oriel window flanked by windows with ogee trefoil lights. Tall buttresses flank the archway, and a tall, canopied niche sits above it, between pointed two-trefoiled light windows. Above the archway is a corbel table and two kneelered gables with three-light mullion windows. The roof ridges have 19th-century square-shafted stacks with moulded heads. To the left of the gatehouse is a single-storey section with a five-transomed-light mullioned window and a four-centred doorway, topped by a corbelled crenellated parapet.

Inside the gatehouse, the front portion originally served as a porch to a central carriageway and footway; both arches are visible in the central wall. A right-hand doorway dates to the 16th century, and both parts are vaulted with tierceron star vaults. The right-hand portion of the porch was a room with a 15th-century fireplace and a square-headed three-trefoiled light window, and a pointed doorway. On the first floor were two chapels, originally separated by pointed arches, with piscinas and 14th-century east windows.