Umberslade Hall

Details

TANWORTH-IN-ARDEN

SP17SW UMBERSLADE PARK
652-1/2/213 Umberslade Hall
06/02/52

II*

Country house, now flats. 1690-1702. For first Lord Archer;
with C19 and C20 embellishments, additions and alterations
including porch and colonnade and with wings of c1900 by WH
Bidlake and Phene Spiers for GF Muntz; c1990 conversion to
flats. Limestone ashlar with concealed roof.
EXTERIOR: main range: 3 storeys with basement, 9-window range
arranged 2:5:2. Vermiculated long and short quoins. Flight of
steps to central distyle porch with clustered columns and
pilasters. 6-panel double doors in decorated surround.
Ground floor has tall 9/6 sashes in tooled, eared architraves
and keystones. Tooled first-floor band. First floor has mainly
tall 9/9 sashes in tooled surrounds with keystones, to centre
a French window and overlight both with glazing bars in tooled
surround with scrolls to shoulders and carved floral festoons
to sides. Tooled second-floor band. Second floor has 6/6
sashes in tooled surrounds. All windows with sills, those to
first and second floors throughout have mainly thick glazing
bars. Tooled stone eaves cornice; balustrade. Rusticated
basement; ground-floor band. Outer ranges with former service
wing to left have mainly 6/6 sashes.
Garden facade: end bays break forward, between them to ground
floor is a tetrastyle Ionic colonnade with pillars in antis
and 9/6 sashes within; outer bays have 6/9 sashes. Windows to
first and second floors as front facade, at first floor the
break-forward returns have niches; bands, cornice and
balustrade continue around house. Similar 9/9 and 6/6 sashes
to returns. Orangery to right.
INTERIOR: entrance hall has a double cube plan: 8 pairs of
engaged fluted Corinthian columns, modillion and dentil frieze
and cornice; niche opposite entrance has statue of Crouching
Venus by Van Nost dated 1702; fireplace to right has massive
scrolls to angles; stone and marble floor has Greek key
border; 6-fielded-panel mahogany doors; panelled walls have
Rococo- and Neo-Classical-type embellishment, heavily-moulded
plaster ceiling c1900.
Most of plasterwork throughout the house believed to be of
c1900. To right of hall a staircase hall with ramped
open-newel staircase with turned rod on bobbin balusters;
dado; panel of grotesque ornament and 4 busts on brackets.
Further flight of stairs to attic. Mainly 6-fielded panel
doors throughout, many with carved decoration; moulded
cornices; fielded-panel shutters to many windows.
HISTORY: the seat of the Archer family. Became the seat of the
Muntz family mid C19 and sold late C20. Tyack considers this
may be the first of Francis Smith's Warwickshire houses and
therefore has an important place in the architectural history
of the county.
(The Buildings of England: Pevsner N and Wedgwood A:
Warwickshire: Harmondsworth: 1966-1990: 437-8; Tyack G:
Warwickshire Country Houses in the Age of Classicism
1650-1800: 1900-: 43).

Listing NGR: SP1364571351

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

482780

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Pevsner, N, Wedgwood, A, The Buildings of England: Warwickshire, (1966), 437-438
Tyack, G, Occasional Papers in Warwickshire Country Houses in the Age of Classicism 1650-1800, (1989), 43

End of official list entry

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