Manor Cottage

Manor Cottage, Westbury

A pair of estate cottages, now converted into a single house, probably built in 1908 for the estate carpenter and head gardener of Westbury Manor by Lord and Lady Scott, who owned the estate from the early 1890s to the 1930s.

The building is constructed of graded coursed ironstone, possibly Hexton stone, with limestone dressings and hipped slate roofs. It was originally built as a pair of one-and-a-half storey, two-bay symmetrical cottages under a single hipped roof with a single central cruciform stack. Each cottage originally had two main ground floor rooms with stairs in the outer bay behind an entrance porch on the south front. The party wall has been mostly removed to create the current single house. Attached to the east and west are narrower single-storey wings set back from the garden front and flush with the north elevation, with half-hipped roofs. Later twentieth-century extensions to the east are not of special architectural interest.

The principal elevation faces south over the garden towards the former Westbury Manor, now Beachborough School. The outer bays each have a stone porch, open on two sides with moulded limestone arches and an offset battered angle buttress with a carved ogee moulding; above is a crisply moulded drip mould. The porches have stone-flagged floors. Doors and windows are set in flush chamfered openings. Porch doorways have part-glazed doors with lower vertical boarded panels. The inner bays of the south elevation have gables with tall kneelers, each containing a three-light chamfered mullion window in flush, chamfered openings with single-pane metal-framed casements, set over similar ground floor windows. The profile of the eaves and gables echoes that of the porches and drip moulds. The west and east faces have paired casements under gables with tall kneelers that give height to the gable. The north elevation has similar windows including a pair of casements under a single central gable. The eaves have exposed shaped rafter feet and metal rainwater goods.

Later porches and entrances providing wheelchair access lead into the single-storey wings but are not of special interest. The single-storey wings are half-hipped; the eastern wing has been extended and altered and is no longer of special interest, while the western wing has had its windows and doors replaced.

Internally, the party walls have been removed to create a single house. Stairs with turned newels and stick balusters remain at each end of the building. The south-facing rooms have been opened up to form one space with a replaced fireplace. A pair of corner fireplaces set at an angle remain in the former north-facing rooms. Each has a plain surround with tall openings, glazed brick linings, and a metal grate. Four-panel doors remain throughout the house. The inner face of the western single-storey wing is brick faced. On the first floor an internal corridor links the two staircases, cutting into rooms, some of which have been reduced in size.

The house sits on a stone-flagged terrace with engineering brick steps overlooking the garden.

Lord and Lady Scott owned the Westbury estate from the 1890s until the 1930s, during which time they updated the manor house and undertook a building programme in the village including creating a recreation ground. This coincided with a period of considerable economic and social change, reflected in legislation introduced to improve social housing. Before 1900 they built Little Worth Cottages (three pairs of cottages to the north, now altered), a row of cottages numbered 46, 47 and 48 Main Street, and the Reading Room adjacent to them, now a community hall. After 1900 they built two pairs of cottages on the main road (A422) and Manor Cottage and the Hermitage, the latter possibly built as a lodge. Like Manor Cottage, the Hermitage is built of ironstone. Westbury Manor has been considerably extended from the L-shaped footprint shown on the 1900 Ordnance Survey map.

The kitchen gardens originally lay to the east of the cottage and have since been redeveloped as Manor Gardens. The stone east boundary wall to the cottages remains, with a bricked-up gateway.