Wern Manor

Wern Manor is a Jacobethan style country house of two storeys with attic, built in snecked local rubble stone with buff sandstone dressings and slate roofs. The roofs are topped mostly with stone chimney stacks and some rooflights. Throughout the building, ovolo-moulded windows with mullions, transoms and leaded glazing feature prominently.

The south front is deliberately asymmetrical and forms the main elevation. A shaped gable marks the end of the entrance hall, flanked to the right by a deep three-window bow and to the left by an intricately detailed porch projecting forward from the shaped gable of the hall range. The gabled bay has finials and a five-light ground-floor window with cornice, with the first floor above jettied on brackets. The swept roof bow contains two- and three-light windows; the masonry appears older, indicating retention of earlier fabric in this wing. The porch displays rich Jacobethan detail: a round-arched entrance with a parapet bearing obelisks on bracket plinths separated by semicircular crenels, rosettes to the frieze, and strapwork-derived carving to paired pilasters. The parapet is inscribed "RMG" and "ANNO DOMINI MDCCCXCII" (1892). The Saloon range to the left has a strapwork pierced parapet with ball finials and a large squared bay with twinned three-light, double-transomed windows, adjoining the gable end of the south range of the service courtyard.

The long east front has a lateral chimney breast with freestone stack. The right-hand gabled section contains two projecting gabled bays towards the front and another at the extreme rear end. A three-window bay lighting the staircase was added during remodelling; it is broader and deeper with ogee-headed top lights below an attic roundel and has a side doorway dated 1892, with a downpipe dated 1894 to the right. The next one-window gabled bay is original below the gable, as evidenced by massive quoins; the masonry change marks the extent of the pre-existing house. The wing steps down beyond, ending with another one-window gabled bay featuring a tripartite ground-floor window. The gabled rear steps in and out with projecting cross ranges and lean-tos; an open yard to the right faces the service courtyard. One central gable has paired 16-pane sashes with a cast-iron-bracketed and glazed hood to the side entrance. A narrower gable to the right contains the secondary staircase and an added squared bay to the next gable, retaining leaded and coloured glazing to the lower panes on both floors. The rear is completed by a snecked rubble projecting gable with a three-light window lighting the Saloon. Stepped down from that and closing the south side of the service courtyard is a two-storey, five-window rubble range of staff accommodation with four-pane horned sashes and one round-arched doorway; similar glazing appears on the south side. Lean-tos and attached outbuildings, some with hipped roofs, link with boundary walls dividing the house from the service courtyard, including crow-stepped and arched gateways. A well-preserved pyramidal-roofed game-larder to the left (east) with internal tiling is retained.

Interior

The entrance leads to an inner porch with mosaic floor, pitch-pine panelling and round-arched doorways. A right-angled turn opens into the long hall set at right angles to the front, featuring a simple rectangular ribbed ceiling, oak floor, and a Delft tiled fireplace with polygonal columns and bracketed mantelpiece. To the left is the Saloon, a large tall room wainscotted to nearly two metres and lit by a broad bay window to the front; it features a grand Jacobethan chimneypiece with five-arched overmantel. The room formerly housed an organ and now has a modern suspended ceiling. To the right of the hall is the former drawing room, now the dining room, with a bow window to the front. This room has a Jacobethan ribbed ceiling with a more Rococo-like coved cornice and wall-panelling in 18th-century manner including some Adamesque detail; light switches have been delicately concealed within small mirrored wall-boxes in similar 18th-century style. It features ornate over-door panels and tapered columns to the chimneypiece, with fluted columns to the bow and side window. The staircase hall is reached from both the main hall and the dining room. A Jacobethan open-well staircase has turned balusters and facetted string with a three-arched screen to the first-floor landing. The former Estate Office, behind the Saloon, has carved wooden door panels to the fireplace cupboard. The back stairs feature Arts and Crafts detail including fluted string and trefoil and quatrefoil pierced balustrade. The dining room has been subdivided but retains a Jacobethan Ionic fireplace; this room and others along this wall have deep boxed window sills housing the hydraulic railway that conveyed food from the kitchen to the dining room. The first floor retains arched openings, original doors and other period features.

Historical and Technical Features

Mr Greaves, a keen inventor of mechanical devices, equipped the house with remarkable gadgetry including the aforementioned railway, a complex fire extinguisher in the passage behind the hall, a chemical refrigerator in the cellars, a copper "hot-man" coat-drier, and water-flushed closets in winter. Only the railway and fire extinguisher remain. In the grounds, a private railway siding once delivered coal, and the drive gates were mechanically operated from the lodge.