Details
BISHOP AUCKLAND
NZ1726 FRONT STREET, West Auckland
634-1/9/185 (North side)
21/04/52 The Old Manor House Hotel
(Formerly Listed as:
WEST GREEN, FRONT STREET (N)
West Auckland
No.1
The Manor House)
GV I
Formerly known as: West Auckland Hall FRONT STREET West
Auckland.
Manor house, later brewery, now hotel. Late C16 and mid C17
with early C18 and C20 alterations. Said to be site of C15
manor house (Surtees 1924).
MATERIALS: rubble with ashlar dressings and plinth. Roof of
stone slates with stone chimneys, and on right wing rear
section of pantiles with stone slates at eaves.
PLAN: H-plan with square stair tower between rear arms. 2
storeys, 2:3:2 windows, the outer pairs in wings breaking
forward.
EXTERIOR: symmetrical front elevation has central early C18
nine-panel door in architrave with Corinthian pilasters
supporting scrolled segmental broken pediment, with cartouche.
C16 segmental-headed lights with moulded spandrels in mullion
and transom 2-light windows flanking door, and similar
mullioned windows above. Relieving arches over ground-floor
windows. Wide 2-light sash over door with drip string
extending over flanking 2-light mullion windows.
Inner returns of wings have 3-light windows, mullion and
transom on ground floor and mullioned above, some blocked.
Front gables of wings have 3-light C16 windows in gable peaks
and early C18 architraves to renewed sashes with fine glazing
bars on ground and first floors. Gables have overlapping stone
coping with roll-moulded finials. Large stone chimneys with
offsets projecting from left return, from eaves at right
return, and from inner walls of rear wings.
Long left return has C16 and early C18 windows; right return
has C18 sashes, and added extruded porch between front and
rear sections of wing, the rear section recessed.
INTERIOR has much high quality detail. Rear section of right
wing formerly kitchen, now hotel bar, has rubble inner wall
partly revealed to show stop-chamfered wide moulded stone fire
surround, with rounded corners, under relieving arch. Within
it a brick beehive bread oven on high square brick plinth, and
to left of it a low, panelled cupboard. Ledged boarded door
with wrought-iron sneck. Sloping stop chamfers to beams and
ogee stops to joists.
Lined recess beside inner door from passage from front
entrance hall, may be draw bar slot, suggesting an earlier
external wall has been enclosed by C16 building, or blocked
access to recess to left of fire in bar. Front entrance hall
has stucco ceiling decoration with moulded crossed beams, and
fleur-de-lys motifs in panels between them.
Close-string stair has first flight from front to back of
hall, and then enters square rear stair tower and becomes
dogleg stair. Carved newels throughout with modified pineapple
finials, high grip handrail with laurel leaves carved along
frieze and guilloche moulding on string. Balustrade richly
carved with scrolled pierced foliage. Shallow risers. Top 2
flights have splat balusters and plain string.
Ground-floor rooms have much panelling (except from left
front, said to be in the Bowes Museum) of early C18 character,
fielded and raised, with 2-panel doors in Eden Room in centre
of right wing which has dentilled ceiling cornice and oval
ceiling panel with large leaf pattern. `White room' has
6-panel doors, tapered fluted pilasters with jewelled base and
egg and dart capitals, enriched panelling, bead moulding over
foliage frieze, ceiling stucco panel with fleur-de-lys and
crown.
Broad ceiling beams throughout upper floors. Stair tower has
wood and lath partition on top floor forming small room. Roof
structure visible in attic rooms of wings, and in floored roof
between them, of very high quality, with triple pegged
collared trusses having raised king posts, side and ridge
purlins, longitudinal ridge bracing, and carpenters' marks in
sequence of present construction. Oak-pegged stone slates.
Conyers Surtees shows that this manor house was the principal
residence of the Eden family from the C16 until they moved to
Windlestone.
(Surtees H C: History of the Township of West Auckland:
Mainsforth: 1924-).
Listing NGR: NZ1791826357
