The Manor House

The Manor House is a grade I listed manor house at Moulton, rebuilt around 1570 with 17th-century alterations and a 20th-century addition of around 1938, originally built for Leonard Smithson. It is constructed of rubble with ashlar dressings and pantile roofs.

The building is arranged on an H-plan with three storeys and a part basement, comprising 2:3:2 bays across the front, with infilling between the rear wings and a two-storey 20th-century wing to the rear right. The front elevation features plinths and chamfered rusticated quoins. Between the front wings, five steps lead up to the front door, flanked by side parapets rising from ball finials and returning with bulbous balusters from corner pedestals to the corners of the wings.

The central range contains a central oak door in an eared and shouldered architrave with bead-and-reel and other decorative motifs, beneath a cyma recta frieze with a stepped drip-mould. A flanking doorway and cross windows in architraves with cornices stepped up in the centre occupy the ground floor. On the first floor are cross windows in architraves with pulvinated friezes and cornices, topped with pediments—triangular in the outer bays and a keyed semicircle in the centre. The second floor has single-light windows in architraves with pulvinated friezes in the outer bays and a keyed oculus in the centre. Both wings are alike, featuring cross windows with stepped cornices on the ground floor, cross windows with pulvinated friezes and triangular pediments on the first floor, and single two-light mullion windows in architraves with pulvinated friezes and cornices within each gable on the second floor. Each gable has elaborately shaped kneelers and ashlar copings.

A parapet with a moulded rail, turned diagonally-set balusters, and interval pedestals with recessed panels and stepped semicircular tops runs across the central range and returns along the inner returns of the wings, meeting the gable slope.

The rear elevation shows quoins and a stepped and corniced external stack rising from the original rear wall of the central spine. The infilling between the wings and the wings themselves have renewed mullion windows. Cyma recta kneelers and ashlar copings ornament the wing gables. The left return features a central blocked doorway flanked by corniced cross windows on the ground floor, a central single-light window flanked by corniced cross windows on the first floor, and three corniced single-light windows on the second floor, with shaped kneelers and ashlar copings. A corniced double stack rises from the centre of the ridge. The right return contains, from left to right at basement level, a single-light window, a chamfered window, a blocked door-head, and a shuttered coal-chute. The ground floor has a corniced cross window, a corniced single-light window, and a five-panel door in a chamfered rusticated quoined surround with a chamfered flat arch lintel. The first floor contains a corniced cross window, a single-light window, a corniced cross window, and a 20th-century single-light window with cornice. The second floor has three corniced single-light windows. A corniced double stack occupies the centre of the ridge. The 20th-century block to the far right follows the fenestration pattern of the existing structure.

The interior is notable for its 17th-century features. The entrance hall contains 17th-century panelling, an ashlar architrave to the fireplace, and stop-chamfered beams. The ground-floor room to the left has pine panelling interspersed with pilasters bearing strapwork and carpenters' tools on the capitals, a diagonally-moulded frieze below the ceiling cornice, and an eared and shouldered overmantel. The ground-floor room to the rear right contains a kitchen fireplace with chamfered rusticated voussoirs to a segmental arch and a large chimney with a priest's hole. The rear left room houses a 17th-century oak staircase with boldly twisted barleysugar balusters, vase finials on newels, and a dog-gate at the bottom, with a moulded ceiling. A secondary stair to the right has turned balusters. The first-floor drawing room, positioned above the hall, features an ashlar fireplace with banded rustication behind pilasters supporting a deep frieze carved with a circular garland of fruit and end drapes. First-floor doors are fitted with two eared and shouldered panels and bolection frames. All rooms on the first and second floors retain original stone fireplaces and were originally heated. The roof contains collared trusses.

Local tradition holds that King James I spent a night in the house, either en route south to assume the English throne or travelling to the races at Gatherley in the same parish. The Smithsons of Moulton were Protestants, though their kinsmen at Cowton and Kiplin Hall were Recusants. The house is depicted in an early 18th-century drawing in Samuel Buck's Yorkshire Sketchbook (1979, page 352).