Tythrop House

Tythrop House is a country house of early 17th-century origin, substantially remodelled by 1680 and further refined in the 1730s. It stands as a Grade I listed building of exceptional architectural and historical importance.

The house follows an E-plan form, originally built for Henry Spiller after 1619. Before 1680, the plan was doubled in depth by the addition of a suite of rooms along the south front, and the earlier structure was comprehensively altered and remodelled. The interior plasterwork and carved decoration were carried out by William Morris I, Katherine Morris and William Morris II during the 1730s, when James Herbert IV owned the property (1721–1749). The house was altered again in the early 19th century and underwent restoration in the 1960s.

The exterior is constructed of brick, with the north front stuccoed and incised with masonry lines. Timber modillion cornices and hipped tiled roofs are prominent features. The house comprises 2 storeys plus dormers and basement beneath the early 17th-century portions.

The south or garden front displays 9 bays with a projecting centre bay carried up to a gabled attic storey window crowned by a segmental pediment. The east front has 9 bays, with the central 3 bays set forward and a third storey crowned by a balustrade. The north or entrance front features 3-bay projecting wings at each end and a 5-bay centre with a modern pedimented porch flanked by a colonnade. The west elevation includes a single-storey 3-bay addition at the south-west.

A plinth, band course and modillion cornice run around the house, except at the 3-storey centre of the east front, which has a moulded brick cornice and pulvinated frieze between the second and third storeys. The south front has 3 gabled leaded-light dormers on either side of the centrepiece, with evidence of Caroline cement architraves to previous cross-casement windows. The central glazed door sits within a stone doorcase of 2 Corinthian columns, entablature, bracketed dentil cornice and segmental pediment. The first-floor window is architraved with enriched scroll supports. Most fenestration consists of 19th-century sashes, except on the north front, where the 5 centre bays retain 1730s sashes with thick glazing bars and keystones. Various windows on the east and west fronts are blank, and tall chimney stacks with panelled faces and moulded cornice heads punctuate the roofline.

The interior is dominated by a full-height hall with a first-floor balustraded balcony on all four sides, supported on large acanthus modillion brackets and surrounded by egg-and-dart cornices. The plasterwork includes portrait medallions of Homer, Virgil, Milton and Pope.

West of the hall is the staircase bay, featuring a very fine elaborate pierced balustrade carved in floral scrolls inhabited by wyverns and snakes, executed in elm. The carving extends to foliage-carved strings and soffits with egg-and-dart corniced hand rails, later acanthus consoles to the lowest newel, and ornate pendants below newels. The dogleg-plan staircase is flanked by plaster panels with full-length figures of Juno and Athena, and busts of Mercury, Mars and Zeus. Timber doorcases and overdoors throughout feature bay-leaf pulvinated friezes and corniced tops with modillion cornices. The staircase carving is attributed to Edward Pierce II (1630–95), primarily on stylistic grounds and by comparison with Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire.

The centre room on the first-floor south front retains a pre-1680 timber cornice with pulvinated bay-leaf frieze below a box cornice, and bay-leaf architraved doorcases. Other rooms on both floors display modillion box cornices and egg-and-dart corniced dado rails with enriched skirting boards. Rooms in the west wing upstairs have dentil cornices and acanthus-fringed dado rails. The left-hand ground-floor room contains a marble fireplace from Ashburnham House with Corinthian order and Victorian reeded doorcases. The centre ground-floor room features a fireplace with console brackets and festoons, and an overmantel with a mirror in a lugged surround flanked by pilasters and topped by a scroll pediment, likely dating to the 1730s. The right-hand ground-floor room has egg-and-dart architraved windows and overdoors with foliage friezes below cornices. The hall ceiling contains Rococo plasterwork of later date than the remainder of the scheme.

The house was altered by James Herbert I, 6th child of the 4th Earl of Pembroke (died 1676), and subsequently by his son James. In the late 18th or early 19th century the house was rendered and the attic storey replaced by a low-pitched slate-roofed attic. The original roof form was reinstated during 1960s restoration, at which time the render was removed from all but the north front. The east and west fronts and north elevations of the wings were cased in new brickwork.

An engraving by Henry Winstanley dated 1680 documents the house and its stable block in detail, showing the original leaded cross-casement windows.