Marston House

Marston House is a country house on the High Street at Marston St. Lawrence, comprising medieval work incorporated into a structure dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, substantially remodelled around 1730, with 19th-century additions.

The house is constructed of squared coursed ironstone and limestone with a stone slate roof and stone stacks. The garden front faces south and presents a U-plan composition. The main frontage is two storeys with an attic storey across five bays. A central doorway features a Gibbs surround with triangular pediment and a six-panel door. On either side are two windows with plain stone frames and eight-pane sashes; the first floor repeats this fenestration pattern. A straight moulded stone parapet runs across the front, with two gabled attic dormers breaking the roofline. The gabled roof has a central stack.

Projecting wings flank each side, separately roofed and comprising two storeys and an attic in three bays. These wings have eight-pane sash windows in plain stone frames, straight moulded stone parapets, gabled attic dormers, and hipped roofs. A 19th-century extension to the right has a hipped slate roof, two storeys, five bays, and eight-pane sash windows with stone lintels.

The entrance front on the north side has a projecting two-storey central block of three irregular bays with a hipped roof. The doorway is fitted with an eared architrave and a scroll pediment on brackets, with a six-panel door and fanlight. Sash windows flank the doorway on both ground and first floors, set in plain stone frames. To the left of the central projection, on the first floor, are two late 17th-century two-light windows with wood mullions, transoms, and leaded panes. To the right of the centre is a single-bay block containing the staircase, featuring two one-light windows with leaded panes on the ground floor and a large sash window with an arched head above, capped by a hipped roof. The west side is reported to have two blocked stone mullioned windows, which were obscured by foliage at the time of survey. A wing projects left of the entrance front, comprising two storeys and an attic in three bays with sash windows.

The interior of the central block, which was formerly a medieval hall, retains a 14th-century arch-braced timber roof. The Smoking Room on the ground floor preserves early 17th-century panelling. Its overmantel, dated 1611 and elaborately carved, features four half-columns decorated with bosses and strapwork, framing an arched centrepiece containing a heraldic shield with strapwork and a carved head. Square side panels display grotesque heads within strapwork frames. The walls are articulated by fluted pilasters of composite order and a carved frieze of rosettes and bosses. A blocked doorway with a carved wooden pediment is set into the wall to the right of the entrance.

The Study contains a fireplace with a projecting wall above it, supported on two stone Doric columns. The fireplace surround is of early 18th-century stone with bolection moulding. Fourteenth-century stone head corbels have been reset around the study walls.

The Drawing Room fireplace, dating around 1750 (brought from elsewhere), is executed in wood and terracotta with an eared architrave and a frieze bearing relief-carved swags of flowers.

An early 18th-century open-well staircase is fitted with three turned balusters to each tread, with tread ends carved with acanthus scrolls. The newel posts are fluted Doric columns.

A first-floor room retains panelling of around 1600 featuring a frieze of acanthus scrolls. Its stone fireplace has a four-centred arch and a carved wooden overmantel displaying blind arcading, strapwork, and a crest.

Early 18th-century bolection panelling lines bedrooms and the first-floor corridor, which is lit by windows containing 16th and 17th-century stained glass shields bearing the coats of arms of the Blencowe family.

The gardens were landscaped in the 18th century and contain a chain of five lakes. A stone dated 1569 has been reset into a garden wall west of the house.

The house belonged to the Blencowe family from the 16th century until around 1955. A west wing was destroyed by fire around 1920.