Manor House And Attached Garden Walls (North West Wall Incorporated Into The Forge And The Coach House)

Manor House and attached garden walls at Church Lane, Princes Risborough

This is a significant house of mid to late 17th-century date, with slightly later rear wings and some earlier internal features incorporated. The front range was refurbished by the Rothschilds in the late 19th century. The building is of two storeys with attic accommodation.

The front elevation, facing onto Church Lane, is constructed of pale red brick laid in English bond. The rear wings employ red and vitreous brick, bonded partly in English bond and partly in Flemish bond. Roofs are of old tiles, hipped and sprocketed over the front range, hipped and gabled to the rear. Brick chimneys have off-set heads and are topped with narrow stone strings.

The front façade is distinguished by a moulded plinth, first-floor band course, and a wooden eaves cornice with modillions. Two tiers of brick pilasters with simply moulded bases, neckings and capitals articulate the elevation. There are five bays, each containing three-pane sash windows with thick glazing bars and boxed frames, set within raised surrounds of red rubbed brick with gauged heads. The brickwork between the lower and upper windows has been altered. Three early 19th to 20th-century hipped dormers with three-pane sashes pierce the roof.

The central entrance features a panelled wooden door with its lower panel formed as a St. Andrew's cross. The rectangular fanlight above has ornamental wooden glazing bars. The doorcase is mid-18th-century in date and includes panelled reveals, a moulded architrave, fluted Doric pilasters, a narrow pulvinated frieze, and a dentilled pediment.

Attached to the front corners of the house are garden walls of 17th and early 18th-century date, constructed of brick in English bond with a moulded plinth and pitched coping, ramped down towards the street. The brick gate piers were rebuilt in 1982. The north-west side of the house displays four-and-a-half bays, with a building break between the right bays. This elevation shares similar articulation and dressings to the front, but features moulded cornices above the first-floor windows and brick aprons below them. The fenestration is irregular; the left bay contains a leaded cross window in a moulded wooden frame, whilst the half-bay to its left has a similar single light. Three hipped dormers pierce this elevation, those to the left featuring paired leaded casements with friezes and cornices.

Early 18th-century brick walls, irregularly bonded, originally surrounded the garden on this side of the house. The north-west wall has been incorporated into a former barn, now converted into two houses. The north-east and south-east fronts of the manor house are irregular in composition with less elaborate external dressings.

The interior has been substantially modified in the 19th century but retains several 17th and 18th-century features, some possibly reset. A very fine mid-17th-century staircase is a notable survivor, featuring a pierced wooden balustrade of linked S-motifs, a moulded handrail, pulvinated string, and newel posts with knob finials. A wooden arch connects the staircase to the hall, embellished with a moulded pendant and an early 17th-century carved frieze.

The hall is lined with mid-18th-century moulded panelling and contains a stone fireplace with impost blocks and moulded cornice. A similar fireplace exists in the first-floor room to the right. The ground-floor room to the left also retains panelling, probably of 19th-century date, with large upper panels arched and fitted with keystones. The fireplace in this room is of mid-17th-century style, with a 17th-century moulded stone architrave and wooden surround incorporating a 17th-century oval bolection panel. The first-floor central room preserves late 16th to 17th-century moulded panels and a moulded stone fireplace with a four-centred arch. Doors throughout the ground and first floors are of 18th-century date, mostly two or three-panel examples.

The house was formerly known as Brooke House. An illustration in Lipscombe's "History of Buckinghamshire", Volume II, page 434, depicts the centre bay with a shaped gable, indicating significant alteration to that feature.