Listed Building record MDO10428 - The Manor House, Piddletrenthide

A country house built in the late 18th century. The building has later modifications and a third storey was added in 1832. It has rendered walls with a hipped slate roof.

Description from record MDO26941:
Manor House. Country House, late C18th with modification and third storey of 1832. <1>

<1> Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume III (Central) Part 2, 216 (Monograph). SDO136.

'(4) The Manor House (70330000), ½ m. S. of (1), is of three storeys above a semi-basement and has rendered walls and slated roofs. The main part of the house of is of the late18th century but the third storey was added in 1832; previously there was a balustraded parapet above the second story. Traces of an earlier house are perhaps recognisable in the banded flint and rubble walls of the outbuildings to the N.W., and in the reset stone-mullioned windows of the semi-basement. The park contains a late18th-century Dovecote and a 19th-century Gazebo.
The E. front of the house is symmetrical and of five bays, the middle bay being wider than the others. At the centre, on the ground floor, is a projecting porch with a balustrade parapet; above the first-floor windows is a cornice. The sashed windows have moulded stone architraves. The front door is approached by curved double flights of stone steps with iron balustrades. The S. front is four-storied and of two wide bays. In the basement the E. bay has a square-headed four-light stone window, probably of the 17th century and reset; the ground floor has two 19th-century bow windows; the first and second floors have sashed windows of three lights. The N front has reset stone basement windows of four and two lights, and, on the other floors, windows approximately as in the S. front. Inside, the hall contains an open-string staircase with a moulded mahogany handrail and reeded cast-iron balusters with volute capitals; the newel-posts are octagonal with palm-leaf capitals. The principal rooms have moulded and enriched cornices. A fireplace surround in a second-floor chamber has a frieze decorated with a human mask flanked by flower swags.

The circular Dovecote (70430012) is 27 ft. high and 15¾ ft. in diameter. It has walls of flint and rubble, partly rendered, with some ashlar dressings, and tiled and lead-covered roofs. At the base is a tall octagonal flint plinth with an ashlar capping. In the E. side of the plinth is a square-headed doorway; above, in the cylindrical walls, are four cross-shaped stone loops with moulded square surrounds. At the centre of the roof is an octagonal arcaded wooden turret, with a tent-shaped lead roof with a ball-finial. Inside, the cylindrical wall is lined with brick and stone nesting-boxes and at the centre is a pivoting ladder.

The octagonal Gazebo (7047008) has rendered walls and slated roofs. It stands on a wide octagonal brick podium which forms a terrace around it, with geometrical iron railings; to the S. is a flight of stone steps. The doorway in the S. side of the upper structure has a square head and, above, a square-headed window of three lights; similar windows occur in the N., E. and W. sides. Inside, each wall except those to the N. and S. has mounted upon it a rectangular plaster-cast of a bas-relief by John Flaxman, depicting a scene from the Iliad or the Odyssey.

Immediately N.W. of the house are the Stables, in part dated 1832 and in part incorporating late 15th or early 17th-century walls of banded flint and rubble. On the roof is a square wooden clock turret and bellcote, with a circular tent-shaped lead roof and a weathervane; the turret is of the 19th century.'

<2> Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey 1:10,000 scale map, 1982 (Map). SDO17396.

(ST70310000) Manor House [NAT]

<3> National Record of the Historic Environment, 888307 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Jun 21 2024 4:33PM