Edgcote House

EDGCOTE HOUSE

A country house built between 1748 and 1754 for Richard Chauncy by architect William Jones. The building features important fittings by London craftsmen, with joinery by Abraham Swan and decorative plasterwork by John Whitehead.

The house is constructed in ironstone ashlar with limestone dressings, an old tile roof, and stone stacks. It displays 2 storeys over a basement and attic, arranged across 9 bays. The 3 centre bays project forward under a pediment. The entrance front faces west and is approached by a double flight of stone steps with balustrade. The central doorway has a moulded architrave with triple keystone and a pediment on brackets with a 20th-century glazed door. Flanking sash windows feature triple keystones. The 3-bay side sections each have a pediment over the middle window, flanked by windows with keystones. The first-floor windows are 9-pane sashes with moulded architraves and keystones. A modillion cornice runs beneath the hipped roof. The garden front is similar in design, whilst the side elevations each contain a 2-storey canted bay in the centre. Basement windows have moulded stone frames with 6-pane sashes.

The interior plan places the Hall and Saloon on a central axis, with the former State Bedroom to the left and library to the right of the hall. The Dining Room and Drawing Room flank the Saloon. Main and secondary stairs occupy either side of the Hall and Saloon at the house centre, with service rooms located in the basement.

The Hall features a stone fireplace framed by scrolls, with a frieze displaying a blank tablet framed by cornucopiae and an open scroll pediment. The ceiling is panelled with ribs bearing guilloche mouldings, and the frieze alternates tripglyphs with rosettes and rococo cartouches. The entrance to the Saloon is flanked by arched niches, with enriched doorways featuring friezes of bay leaves and 6-panel doors.

The Saloon contains a stone fireplace with scroll brackets and relief carving of cherubs, birds and dogs. The wooden overmantel has fluted Corinthian half-columns and an open scroll pediment. The walls are panelled with carved doorcases, and the ceiling displays rococo plasterwork with an oval centrepiece of leaf scrolls, flowers, and exotic birds and beasts, with portrait medallions in the corners.

The Dining Room has a carved wooden fireplace with an overmantel similar to that in the Saloon, panelled walls, and a plaster frieze of leaf scrolls and heads. The Drawing Room features a marble fireplace framed by composite order columns with capitals carved with squirrels and a frieze with cherubs. Its wooden overmantel has a broken pediment with pendants of fruit and flowers.

The Morning Room, formerly a study, contains a marble fireplace with a carved wooden overmantel moved from the Family Parlour (now kitchen). The Library, now the Billiard Room, and the former State Bedroom were altered in the 19th century. An open-well mahogany staircase features balusters carved with wave mouldings and a carved string instead of tread ends, beneath a coved ceiling and square cupola with elaborate plasterwork decoration. Attic rooms reportedly contain re-used 17th-century panelling from the old house.

The park was laid out in the 18th century with a lake fed from the River Cherwell and an irrigation system comprising dams and a lock to supply the kitchen garden and power the Hill. Work on the park began in the 1740s before the house was rebuilt. The old house had faced south towards the church, as shown on an estate map dated 1713. The property was purchased by William Chauncy in 1543 and passed to Richard Chauncy, a London merchant, in 1742. Richard Chauncy's account books for the rebuilding and furnishing of Edgcote, preserved at the house, record the names of masons and craftsmen. William Smith of Warwick designed the stables shortly before his death in 1747 and may have made designs for the house, though William Jones received payment for drawing plans and surveying, with no evidence that his plans derived from Smith's designs. Abraham Swan's joinery at Edgcote is significant as a realisation of his own designs, particularly notable given his publication of "A Collection of Designs in Architecture" in 1757.