The Manor House

Details

MOULTON MOULTON NZ 2203-2303

10/94 The Manor House 19-12.51 (formerly listed as Manor House)

GV I

Manor house. Rebuilt c1570, with some C17 alterations and addition of c1938. For Leonard Smithson. Rubble with ashlar dressings, pantile roofs. 3 storeys and part basement, 2:3:2 bays; H-plan, with infill between the rear wings, and with C20 2-storey wing to rear right. Plinths, chamfered rusticated quoins. Between front wings, 5 steps up to front door, with side parapets rising from ball finials and returning with bulbous balusters from corner pedestals to corners of wings. Central range: central oak door in eared and shouldered architrave with bead-and-reel and other decorative motifs, cyma recta freize below drip-mould stepped down in centre. Flanking doorway, cross windows in architraves with cornices stepped up in centre. On first floor, cross windows in architraves with pulvinated friezes and cornices, with pediments on central part of pediments, triangular in outer bays and keyed semicircle in centre. On second floor, single-light windows in architraves with pulvinated frieze in outer bays, and keyed oculus in architrave in centre. Wings (both alike): cross windows in architraves with cornices stepped up in centre on ground floor; cross windows in architraves with pulvinated friezes and cornices with central triangular pediments on first floor; a single 2-light mullion window in architrave with pulvinated frieze and cornice in each gable on second floor. Elaborately-shaped kneeler and ashlar copings to each gable. Across central range, and returning along inner returns of wings and returning to meet gable slope, parapet with moulded rail, turned diagonally-set balusters and interval pedestals with recessed panels with stepped semicircular tops. Rear: quoins, stepped and corniced external stack rising from original rear wall of central spine. Renewed mullion windows to infilling between wings and to wings. Cyma recta kneelers and ashlar copings to wing gables. Left return: central blocked doorway, flanked by cross windows with cornices on ground floor; a central single-light window flanked by cross windows, all with cornices, on first floor; 3 single-light windows with cornices on second floor. Shaped kneelers, ashlar copings. Corniced double stack rising from centre of ridge. Right return: basement from left: single-light window, chamfered window, blocked door-head and shuttered coal-chute. Ground floor: cross window, single-light window, both corniced and 5-panel door in chamfered rusticated quoined surround with lintel chamfered as flat arch: first floor: cross window, single-light, cross window and C20 single-light all with cornices; second floor: 3 single-light windows with cornices. Corniced double stack in centre of ridge. C20 block to far right follows fenestration pattern. Interior: entrance hall with C17 panelling, ashlar architrave to fireplace, stop-chamfered beams. Ground-floor room to left has pine panelling interspersed with pilasters with strapwork and carpenters' tools on the capitals, diagonally-moulded frieze below ceiling cornice, and eared and shouldered overmantel. In ground-floor room to rear right, kitchen fireplace with chamfered rusticated voussoirs to segmental arch, and large chimney, with priest's hole. To rear left, C17 oak staircase with boldly-twisted barleysugar balusters, vase finials on newels and with dog-gate at bottom. Moulded ceiling. Secondary stair to right has turned balusters. On first floor, above hall, drawing room with ashlar fireplace, with banded rustication behind pilasters supporting a deep frieze carved with circular garland of fruit and end drapes. First-floor doors have 2 eared and shouldered panels and bolection frames. All rooms on first and second floors were heated and have original stone fireplaces. Roof has collared trusses. There is a tradition that James I spent a night in the house, either on his way south to assume the English throne, or on his way to the races at Gatherley in the same parish. The Smithsons of Moulton were Protestants, but their kinsmen at Cowton and Kiplin Hall were Recusants. The house is shown in an early C18 drawing in Samuel Buck's Yorkshire Sketchbook (1979) p352. VCH, i, p191.

Listing NGR: NZ2350003739

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

322160

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Page, W, The Victoria History of the County of York: North Riding, (1914), 191
Hall, I, Samuel Bucks Yorkshire Sketch Book, (1979), 352

End of official list entry

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