Listed Building record MDO9474 - Cranborne Manor House, Cranborne

A three storey, early 17th century hunting lodge with basements and attics. It was originally built as a hunting lodge between 1207-8, and appears to have been referred to as a castle in 1241 and 1322. The original plan probably comprised a first floor hall and additional rooms over a vaulted undercroft with a tower to the south west. The building was heavily buttressed and crenelated with arrow slits in the machicolations. The 17th century alterations included the heightening of the south west tower and the construction of a new tower to the south east. Wings were added to the west and east sides of the 13th century house, but the western wing was rebuilt in 1647 and the eastern wing demolished in 1716. From the 18th century until 1860 the house was divided and in use as two farmhouses. The building was restored and reconverted to a single dwelling in 1863.

(SU 05311322) Manor House (NR) <2>

Cranborne Manor House, historically one of the most important domestic buildings in England, incorporates the main walls of a fortified hunting lodge extant in 1189 (History of the King's Works, II, 922 <4.1>). It was acquired in 1607 by Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, and is still the seat of the Marquess of Salisbury.

(4) CRANBORNE MANOR HOUSE (053132), of three storeys with basements and attics, has walls partly of rendered rubble and flint with ashlar dressings, and partly of ashlar; the roofs are tiled and stone-slated.The building dates from the first decade of the 13th century; important alterations and additions were made in the first half of the 17th century. As one of the oldest surviving domestic buildings in England, preserving its original form to an extraordinary extent, Cranborne Manor House is of great significance in architectural history.

The accounts of King John's journeyings show that he visited Cranborne on many occasions;

1) it was conveniently placed for hunting in Cranborne Chase and was within a day's jouney of Clarendon Palace. In 1207-8 Ralph Neville the chief forester expended £67. 6s 4d. on 'building the king's houses of Cranborne'.

2) Many architectural details characteristic of the early 13th century leave no doubt that a great deal of this building survives.

Early in the 17th century the Cranborne estate was acquired by Robert Cecil, 1st earl of Salisbury, who employed John Norden to make a general survey of the property. Norden's survey, dated 1605, is preserved at Hatfield House and upon the title page of the accompanying terrier is drawn the plan and elevation of the manor house (Plate 42). The drawing shows a heavily buttressed and crenelated building with two main compartments (C and D) separated by a thick wall, a projecting tower (A) at the S.W. corner, a smaller turret (F) for latrines at the S.E. corner, a winding stair (E) in a three-sided turret projecting from the S. wall, and a straight flight of stairs (G) giving access to the building at the N.E. corner. The walls, with pointed and square-headed windows, stood three storeys high and were crowned by an embattled parapet with machicolation. When Norden drew it, the large western compartment was roofless and its W. gable (K) stood isolated; compartment D, on the other hand, retained a pitched roof. Except for the N.E. stairs (G) which have gone and the fenestration which has been greatly altered, most of the features depicted by Norden exist today (Plate 43). The principal external changes are that tower A has been heightened and a corresponding tower masks turret F. Important features to survive include the coupled blind arches seen in the lower storey of Norden's E. elevation. The actual arches are masked by a modern addition, but corresponding arches are seen in the W. elevation. Another important feature noted by Norden is the embattled parapet with ornamental machicolation of trefoil archlets on moulded and carved brackets, some of them retaining scalloped decoration typical of the early 13th century (Plate 42). Other details of the mediaeval house have been brought to light in recent years. Removal of the plaster in the S. elevation has exposed a jamb and part of the head of the upper pointed window shown by Norden on the E. of the stair turret.

1 Hardy, 'Itin. Johannis Regis Angl.', Arch. XXII, 124
2 Pipe Roll, 10 John, 202.
3 Cecil Papers, Maps, supplement 18.

In the northern part of the E. elevation the single pointed window shown by Norden between two buttresses has been reopened; inside, this window illuminates a wide embrasure with shafted jambs and a small piscina on the S., evidently the recess for an altar, indicating a chapel in this corner of the building. A large aumbry to the S. of the recess has rebated jambs and a trefoil sinking on the face of the lintel. The aumbry is now in the same room as the altar recess, but it is possible that a wooden partition originally stood between the two features, the aumbry thus being in a room beside the chapel. The chapel being presumably the king's private oratory, the adjacent room was doubtless that of the royal clerk or chaplain, and it may be conjectured that the aumbry was for the safe-keeping of personal effects, Lastly, in the lower part of the N. elevation, between the two western buttresses, a double loop has recently been exposed from which bowmen might cover the northern approaches to the house in case of attack (Plate 42).

From these data much of the original arrangement of the royal hunting lodge can be reconstructed. Compartments C and D were undercrofts; in C the vaulting rested on two piers; in D it rested on the walls alone; the double bowman's loop was manned from undercroft C. Stairway G probably led to a mezzanine floor in the upper part of undercroft D; this room, lit by the lower of the two windows seen by Norden in the eastern part of the S. wall is likely to have been the guardroom. In the S.W. corner of the guard room an obliquely set doorway led to the spiral stairs, which wound down to the lower part of the undercroft and up to the battlements, as they still do. Two or three steps up from the threshold of the guardroom doorway another doorway gave access to the great hall which occupied the whole area above undercroft C and probably was open to the roof. The hall was lit by large pointed windows in the S. wall and perhaps by other windows on the W. and N.; the single chimneystack seen in Norden's drawing presumably served a fireplace in the N. wall. A doorway in the S.W. corner of the hall led to a vice, now gone, but attested by loops in the E. wall of tower A; this served apartments on two or three floors in the tower. From the level of the hall, the spiral stair first mentioned rose to the floor over the guardroom, where were the king's chapel and the presumed clerk's chamber with its aumbry, the chamber being lit by the pointed window on the E. of the stair turret. Adjacent on the S.E. Norden shows a garderobe. Continuing upwards, the spiral stairs led to the storey above the chapel and clerk's chamber, lit by the two upper windows seen in Norden's E. elevation; no doubt this was the king's own chamber. It is possible that a small garderobe was contrived at this level in the thickness of the buttressed wall, directly over that of the floor below; dotted lines on Norden's plan suggest that the garderobe was directly accessible from the spiral stair by means of a narrow passage. The chimneystack with two flues which Norden shows rising from the E. walk of the battlements probably served fireplaces in the king's chamber and in the clerk's chamber below.

Since the main walls of the 13th-century building were sound and of great strength, Robert Cecil proceeded to reuse them in the construction of his new house, but although the walls were retained, the floor-levels and the fenestration were changed. The battlements of the mediaeval S.W. tower were removed and its height was increased. At the S.E. corner of the house a corresponding tower was built, obliterating the former garderobe turret which now is attested only by thickening of the inside walls at certain places. The centre buttresses on the E. and W. walls were removed; those on the N. wall were disguised with classical pilasters, coupled and arranged in three storeys. Plans of the house and gardens by Thomas Fort, master mason, preserved at Hatfield (C.P.M. supp. 70 A, (1-5)), show that the main approach was originally on the N., although the direction has now been reversed. At basement level, in the angle between the E. wall of the mediaeval building and the new S.E. tower, Fort's plan (Plate 41) shows the new kitchen; a 'pasterie' extended the range further E., and larders lay to the S.; these rooms were at about the same level as 'the oulde kitchen' which occupied most of compartment C on Norden's plan.

Above these rooms, on the ground floor Fort's plan shows the hall and screens-passage, a buttery to the E. of them, a pantry in the new S.E. tower and, further E., a staircase and 'lodgings', the latter with bow windows facing N. and S.; the new kitchen was high enough to extend into this storey. The same plan shows the mediaeval S.W. tower occupied by a staircase, which still exists; further W. is a wing with a parlour and a chamber, with N. and S. bow windows to match those of the E. wing. Fort's plan of the first floor shows the upper part of the hall, lodgings in the E. wing, and a withdrawingchamber and a large 'new dininge roome' in the W. wing. The place of King John's oratory and his clerk's room is taken by an apartment named 'Prince's Chamber'. The second-floor plan shows the great chamber and a withdrawing chamber in the area above the hall, and a room marked 'the Kinge's chamber' in the position similarly identifiedin the foregoing analysis of the mediaeval building; the S.E. tower has a lodging at this level; the rest of the plan shows 'ded roomes' in the roof-spaces of the E. and W. wings. The topmost plan shows lodgings and `gutters'.

The building account-book records that the 'tarris' was built on the N. of the house in 1610; steps from it led to an arcaded porch sheltering the main entrance. A somewhat similar porch with a 'studie' above it was built on the S. side of the house. The N. courtyard was formed in 1611 and the 'courte garden' was laid out on the S. of the house in 1620. Over #3,000 was spent on the house between 1608 and 1612. In 1636 Thomas Sawyer, mason, received payment for stone rails and balusters in the court before the house. In 1643 troops were quartered in the house and did considerable damage. A letter of c. 1645 from Thomas Fort complains that the gateway of the N. court and the balustrades of the terrace had been 'broken down by ye souldiers', and asks for new designs from Captain Ryder. The same letter mentions that the early 17th-century W. wing was in a bad state and that Captain Ryder had already drawn up plans for rebuilding it. The accounts of 1647 include items- 'to the workmen for pulling down the west part of Cranborne House in April and May', 'paid to Thomas Forte freemason for building the west end, until June 28, #196. 0. 5', 'for 9000 bricks for ... buttresses to join the old and the new building together', and 'the finishing over the Porch with my Lordes Arms'. The accounts of 1648 include Captain Ryder's bill for 'a design for the new building at Cranborne'.

The rebuilding of the W. wing was finished by 1648, but notes of minor works occur in the account-book until 1657. The house, however, seems to have remained unoccupied by its owners; a note of 1685 states 'there is no tenant of the mansion house nor hath been for many years'. In 1716 the work of demolishing the early 17th-century E. wing appears to have been started when a certain Andrew Coney beganto pull down the chimneys. Throughout the 18th century and until 1860 the building was divided into two farmhouses. In 1828 James Buckler made drawings from the N. and the S.E. (B.M., Add. MS., 36361, 140-1; 36439, 228). In 1863 a programme of repairs and alterations was initiated and the house was once more taken into use as a residence by the 2nd Marquess of Salisbury. <1, 4>

Cranborne Manor House. Grade I. The Gatehouse and South Coutyard walls are listed Grade II*. <3, 7>

There is documentary evidence that the site was a castle in 1241 and 1322. <6>

<1> DOE (HHR), 1951, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest: Wimborne and Cranborne RD, 2 (Scheduling record). SDO17339.

<2> Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey Map 6in, 1963 (Map). SWX1540.

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

<4> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1975, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume V (East), 7-12 (Monograph). SDO129.

‘(4) CRANBORNE MANOR HOUSE (053132), of three storeys with basements and attics, has walls partly of rendered rubble and flint with ashlar dressings, and partly of ashlar; the roofs are tiled and stone-slated. The building dates from the first decade of the 13th century; important alterations and additions were made in the first half of the 17th century. As one of the oldest surviving domestic buildings in England, preserving its original form to an extraordinary extent, Cranborne Manor House is of great significance in its architectural history.
The accounts of King John’s journeyings show that he visited Cranborne on many occasions [Footnote: Hardy, ‘Itin. Johannis Regis Angl.’, Arch. XXII, 124], it was conveniently placed for hunting in Cranborne Chase and was within a day’s journey of Clarendon Palace. In 1207-8 Ralph Neville the chief forester expended £67. 6s. 4d. on ‘building the king’s houses of Cranborne’ [Footnote: Pipe Roll, 10 John, 202]. Many architectural details characteristic of the early 13th century leave no doubt that a great deal of this building survives. . . .’

<4.1> Allen Brown, R, Colvin, H M, and Taylor, A J, 1963, The history of the King's Works, Volume 2: the Middle Ages, 922-3 (Monograph). SDO18003.

<5> Cathcart-King, D J, 1983, Castellarium anglicanum: an index and bibliography of the castles in England, Wales and the islands, 129 (Monograph). SDO16340.

<6> English Heritage, 1984-1987, Register of parks and gardens of special historic interest in England: Dorset (Monograph). SWX1383.

<7> DOE (HHR), 1986, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest: Wimborne District, 1 (Scheduling record). SDO18076.

<8> National Record of the Historic Environment, 213655 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Dec 13 2022 10:33AM