The Manor House

The Manor House

This is a two-storey house with attic, built in red sandstone rubble with a hipped stone slate roof. A rear extension has a second floor added in red brick with a flat roof. The building dates to around 1700 and originally presented a five-window-wide symmetrical elevation in the William and Mary manner, though later alterations make this difficult to confirm from the stonework.

The main elevation now has three windows on the ground floor and four on the first floor. A central doorway rises via a flight of stone steps. The door itself has four panels and appears Victorian, with a flat hood on brackets that dates to the twentieth century but is in character with the original circa 1700 design.

The two windows to the left of the door are mullion and transom casements in the circa 1700 style, though they are twentieth-century replacements under concrete lintels. To the right of the door stands a single large four-light mullion and transom window beneath an elliptical arch, probably Victorian. Disturbance in the stonework to the right indicates the position of an earlier window. Below this is the entrance to a cider cellar, framed by a monolithic stone surround with vertical vents on either side.

The first floor carries four modern timber casements under concrete lintels. The stonework shows that cills have been raised and the central window infilled. A timber modillion cornice runs around the entire building, though it is less grand across the rear. This is appropriate to the circa 1700 character, but the present owner reports it was added in the twentieth century and came from Trewyn House.

The hipped roof features a small central gabled dormer, probably original, and two roof lights to the right. The left gable has a rebuilt red brick stack over a blind wall with a large relieving arch, suggesting this room once contained a traditional kitchen with a substantial fireplace before the kitchen was relocated to the rear extension. A roof light sits beside the stack.

The garden gable displays two mullion and transom casements under flat arches on the ground floor; the right-hand one may be partly original. The upper floor had two more casements, but the left is infilled and the right has had its cill raised with a small timber casement inserted. A dormer with casement window sits above.

The rear elevation has a continuous outshut, raised on the left half, which originally housed the scullery and pantry. It contains five small modern casements and a door, with one small casement in the rear wall of the upper floor of the main block. Two roof lights and a rebuilt red brick stack to the left—which heated the main ground and upper floor rooms—complete the rear.

Interior

The interior has been extensively altered in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The plan is only one room deep, with a lean-to extension across the rear, providing four main rooms. The room to the right of the front door contains two roughly chamfered ceiling beams with lambs' tongue stops, as do some ceiling beams on the first floor. The staircase and remaining joinery date to the late nineteenth century.

The roof displays principal rafters with three tiers of pegged purlins, with hip principals surviving at either end. A vaulted probable cider cellar, entered from outside, lies beneath the main room.