Listed Building record MDO9335 - Old Manor House, Stinsford

A manor house built in the late sixteenth century, with a rear wing added in the early seventeenth century, and considerably restored around 1960. The building has walls of rough ashlar, a slate roof with parapets and coped gables, and ashlar stacks at the rear with diagonally set shafts.

The Old Manor House, Kingston Maurward (SY 71859099), formerly the seat of the Grey family, is an E-shaped, coursed and square rubble building of two storeys with attics dating form the end of the 16th century. A projecting south-east wing was added in the first half of the 17th century. The house has recently (1972) been saved from dereliction and restored by R A Sturdy. <2-3>

'The Old Manor' (name confirmed) restored and in good preservation. See ground photographs. <4>

<1> Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey Map 6in, 1963 (Map). SWX1540.

(SY 71859098) Manor House (NR)

<2> Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume III (Central) Part 2, 254-6 (Monograph). SDO136.

‘(5) THE OLD MANOR HOUSE, Kingston Maurward (71859099), 750 yds. E. of the parish church, is of two storeys with attics, and has walls of squared and coursed rubble with ashlar dressings; the roofs are slated, with stone-slate verges. The house dates from the end of the 16th century and has an E-shaped plan opening towards the W. (Plate 204). In the first half of the 17th century a wing was added, projecting E. from the S. part of the main range. The house was the seat of the Grey family until the marriage of George Pitt with Lora, the last Grey heiress, c. 1700, after which Kingston Maurward House (4) was built, and the old manor house was left to become first a farmhouse, then an almshouse and, more recently, tenements. The house is now in process of restoration. Externally it is a good specimen of Elizabethan domestic architecture; internally it has been extensively remodelled.
The W. front is symmetrical and of five bays; the bays to N. and S. project as wings and the middle bay also projects as a porch of equal height with the other bays. Every bay is gabled on the W. front and each projecting bay has similar gables on its N. and S. sides. The side gables are modern restorations, except in the case of the N. side of the N. wing and the S. side of the S. wing; evidence to justify this restoration was found during the recent works. At the foot of the elevation is a plinth with a continuous ogee-moulded capping, and similar mouldings form string-courses above the ground-floor and first-floor windows; the attic windows have labels. All the gables have moulded copings and richly carved apex finials of various forms, many of them restored. Every bay except the centre bay has a ground-floor and a first-floor window of four transomed square-headed lights with chamfered reveals and hollow-chamfered mullions and jambs; at the foot of each jamb and mullion the chamfers end in moulded pedestal-stops. The attic storey has square-headed three-light windows with details similar to the other windows. The projecting N. and S. bays have, in the side walls, ground, first and attic storey windows as described; these are modern restorations, but the original openings were adequately demonstrated by surviving fragments of the internal splays. The projecting central bay has a low round-headed W. archway with continuous multiple ovolo mouldings; above is a carved achievement-of-arms (Plate 48) of Grey impaling Stawel; Angel Grey married Katherine Stawel c. 1630 and the cartouche must be an insertion in the 16th-century masonry. Above the cartouche-of-arms the porch bay has a three-light first-floor window and a two-light attic window; there are no openings in the side walls. The doorway within the porch has a four-centred head and moulded jambs with chamfered stops.
The S. front has a moulded plinth and string-courses as described; in the 17th-century E. extension the first-floor string-course is stepped up to correspond with the changed floor-level. The attic storey does not now continue in the extension although evidence uncovered during the restorations indicates that it formerly had two gabled windows. The 16th-century part of the S. front has two gabled bays with restored three-light windows in the W. bay and orginal five-light openings in that to the E.; the details of these windows are as on the W. front. Until recently the western gable was crowned by an ashlar chimney-stack, probably added in the 17th century when the original windows were closed and fireplaces were inserted. Of two doorways on the ground floor, that to the W. has chamfered jambs and a low rounded head and appears to be inserted; that to the E. has moulded jambs and a four-centred head and is probably original to the 17th-century extension. The extension has, on the ground floor, a transomed window of five lights and another of three lights and, on the first floor, a transomed four-light window and an untransomed three-light opening with a label. These windows have details identical with those of the W. front and are probably composed of elements taken from the former openings in the side walls of the western projecting bays. In the E. and N. elevations the fenestration is irregular. On the E. side of the original 16th-century range, toward the N. end, a large external chimney-breast with weathered offsets culminates in three diagonally-set chimney shafts, one of which is original. A similar chimney-stack with two shafts occurs in the S. part of the 16th-century block; it was originally external but became enclosed when the 17th-century wing was built. The N. end of the 16th-century range has two gabled bays; that to the E. has on each floor a four-light window with a label, there being no string-courses on this elevation; the western bay has no windows; a slightly projecting chimneybreast in the lower storey is weathered back above the level of the first floor. In the re-entrant angle between the E. wall of the original range and the N. wall of the 17th-century wing a connecting bay has recently been built to afford communication between the two parts of the house; it stands on old foundations, perhaps those of a former stair tower.
Internally, there are few original features and the layout of the rooms can be recovered only in outline. The W. doorway appears to have opened into a through-passage, or screenspassage, now represented only by mortice-holes for the partition studding on the underside of a first-floor beam. The Hall lay S. of the passage and extended as far as the S. external wall; it was on the ground floor only. Hutchins's mention of 'a little room within the hall' (II, 566) suggests that the S.W. bay was separate in the 18th century, but as the first-floor beam contains no mortices for the studs of a partition it appears that the bay originally was one with the Hall. The Hall fireplace has recently been restored; it has an ogee-moulded and hollow-chamfered head with a raised centre, continuous jambs and chamfered stops. Immediately S. of the fireplace is a round-headed archway with a double ovolo-moulded head, moulded imposts, moulded jambs and chamfered stops; it leads into the 17th-century E. wing and presumably was inserted when that wing was built. The original kitchen evidently lay N. of the through-passage. The chimney-breast noted near the N.E. corner of the W. range contains the elements of a very large fireplace opening, with chamfered jambs and a chamfered segmental head, now restored. Between the kitchen and hall fireplaces, the E. wall of the 16th-century range is pierced by an orginal doorway with moulded jambs and a four-centred head; the opening has been moved from its original position but it probably comes from the E. end of the former screens-passage. The 17th-century E. wing is divided into two parts by a N.-S. partition of large timber studs; one of these timbers retains a mortice at a level which suggests the half-landing of a former staircase. The projection of a dismantled fireplace was found at the centre of the E. wall of the E. range, and scanty remains of a moulded plaster ceiling cornice were noted in one corner of this chimney-breast. On the first floor, in the chamber above the S. part of the hall, is an original fireplace with an ogee-moulded and hollow-chamfered head with a raised centre and continuous jambs; the chamber over the kitchen has a similar fireplace in the northern part of the large chimney-breast noted above; adjacent, in the N. wall, is a small stone niche with a four-centred head. A fireplace with an ogeemoulded and hollow-chamfered four-centred head occurs on the first floor in the E. wall of the 17th-century wing, directly above that on the ground floor.
The Terrace which lies before the W. front is bordered by a moulded kerb, probably the plinth of a 17th-century balustrade. Responds for piers occur at intervals in the kerb mouldings. Similar features are seen on the ramped plinths which flank the flight of stone steps ascending to the terrace.’

<3> Newman, J, and Pevsner, N, 1972, The Buildings of England: Dorset, 246-247 (Monograph). SWX1290.

<4> Barton, J G, Various, Field Investigators Comments JGB, F1 JGB 10-NOV-80 (Unpublished document). SDO11900.

<5> Ritchie, K, 2003, Kingston Maurward College. Archaeological Field Evaluation Report. (Unpublished document). SDO12447.

<6> National Record of the Historic Environment, 454991 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Sep 27 2023 3:41PM