Boarstall Tower

Boarstall Tower is a house, originally the fortified gatehouse to a larger house demolished in the late 18th century. Built in the early 14th century, it was commissioned by John de Handle, who received a licence to crenellate in 1312. The tower has undergone alterations in the late 16th and 17th centuries, with 20th-century repairs and internal modifications.

The tower is constructed of coursed rubble stone with ashlar dressings. The north front features bands of ashlar. It has a lead roof. The building is rectangular with hexagonal corner towers, the rear towers being slightly taller and containing stone spiral staircases. The tower is three storeys high; the top storey is a single large room, while the lower storeys each have one bay to either side of a central archway.

The towers are adorned with carved stone gargoyles, battlemented parapets with 17th-century copings, and 14th-century slit windows. The north-facing tower windows are cross-shaped, while two southeast-facing tower windows have trefoil heads. The centre block has irregular 16th- and 17th-century windows, and the south-facing towers feature 16th- and 17th-century windows similar to those in the centre block. The south-facing towers also have 16th- and 17th-century doorways with chamfered depressed arches and Tudor hoodmoulds. The centre block, except for the south front, has 17th-century balustraded stone parapets; the north parapet includes a carved frieze below, and the side parapets cant outwards over bay windows. Two octagonal stone chimney shafts flank the central bay, also dating to the 17th century. The windows are 16th- and 17th-century moulded stone mullion windows with leaded lights.

On the north front, the ground floor windows are two-light, and the first floor windows are single-light. A small central ground-floor light has a grooved sill, likely caused by a portcullis chain. The central 14th-century depressed archway has two chamfered orders and 17th-century doors, which have been reversed, revealing moulded panels on their inner faces. This archway is flanked by 17th-century stone buttresses that rise in a semi-circular arch to support a second-floor rectangular bay window of three lights. The rear of the tower also features a 14th-century arch, flanked by single lights, a two-light window to the first floor, and two cross windows to the upper storey. The canted bay windows on the sides have moulded corbel bases and transomed upper windows.

A single-storey range attached to the right side has been significantly altered in the 20th century but incorporates older elements, including angled rear corners and chamfered ashlar jambs.

Internally, a central passage has been incorporated into a room by removing the left-side wall. A ground-floor room to the right has an altered fireplace with a shallow late 17th-century stone arch. The upper floors retain 14th-century two-centred chamfered arches to the towers, notably an oak arch from the large room to the southeast tower. Original doors remain in some first-floor rooms. A notable upper room has a late 16th-century stone fireplace with a moulded four-centred arch and stopped jambs, as well as heraldic glass of 1692 in the north window. Traces of medieval drawing are visible on the rear wall of a ground-floor room. A consecration cross and a 17th-century clock are located in the southwest tower.

In front of the tower is a bridge built in 1736, with two brick arches spanning the moat. The property is now owned by The National Trust.