Birtsmorton, Worcestershire

History and harmony

If you said the words “romantic moated manor house” a building like Birtsmorton Court might well come to mind. A structure that has evolved over seven or eight centuries, this beautiful house is made up of a mixture of timber-framed, stone, and brick wings, all different but wonderfully harmonious, set in quiet countryside, and partly shaded by trees. Birtsmorton may have been begun in 13th century, but in the 15th it was bought by one John Nanfan, who rebuilt most of it. In subsequent centuries, the house was home to various landed families (including relatives of Richard Hakluyt, the writer on exploration, and the family of William Huskisson, the statesman who was the first person to be killed by a railway train) and several of these later occupants made substantial alterations to the building, producing the delightful hotchpotch that remains today.

My photograph shows the view from the south, where there are buildings of various periods in different materials. On the right, the house is stone below, timber-framed with brick infill between the timbers above; this timber-work is a replacement of 1929–30 of earlier work that had been destroyed by fire. On the left is a contrasting brick wing built in the 18th century, with sash windows. Between these two parts is a mixture of various dates, with a pair of timber-framed bays, some stone walls, and tall brick chimneys.

It would take a long time to unpick the complex architectural history that produced this rich and diverse collection of walls, gables, roofs, and chimneys. Even for someone with expertise in the archaeology of buildings it would be a challenge, and one would need to have the run of the place for some considerable time. As Birtsmorton is still a private house, archaeologists are not likely to be unpicking it any time soon. Even if its detailed history is hard to decipher, though, its visual harmony is intact, and a thing to marvel at.

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The house is available for events such as weddings, and there’s more information about it here.

Craven Arms, Shropshire

Stokesay Castle (1): A Gothic room

Stokesay Castle is one of my favourite buildings, and has been since when I first visited it, long ago when I was a teenager, in the pouring rain. I’m pleased to say the weather was much better for my most recent visit, and the bright light inspired me to take some photographs not just of the exterior of the building but also of a couple of the interiors.

As many of you will know, Stokesay Castle is not a castle at all, but a fortified manor house. Although has a crenellated tower and a defensive moat, it lacks the strong fortifications and tiny windows of a true castle and would not have withstood a full-blown siege. Stokesay was built in the 1280s and 1290s by Laurence of Ludlow, a wool merchant who had done so well that he had become one of the richest men in England. He built this house to give him a degree of security and to act as a status symbol. Slightly showy, but not vast enough to make the aristocracy jealous, this house was built to show that the Ludlow family had arrived.

Remarkably, much of Laurence’s house of the 13th century, including the chunky polygonal south tower, the solar block, and the hall with its linked north tower, survives. In the picture above of the south tower and hall, only the big buttresses and the outer stairway up to the solar are later additions. The big Gothic windows light the most important medieval room: the hall.


Here, beneath this glorious roof – many of its original timbers are still in place – Laurence and his family would have gathered for meals with their household of maybe 25 people. Laurence and his family and their guests would have sat at the high table at the far end of the room; the rest of the household would have used two long tables placed at right-angles to it, running along the length of the hall. Their food was prepared in a kitchen nearby (no longer standing) and wine and beer came up from a buttery on a lower floor, just off the hall.

This room would have been the social centre of the house, heated by a hearth in the middle of the floor that was the symbol of commensality and hospitality as well as the literal source of heat and light. For several centuries the hall was loud with conversation and, probably, music, and alive with the comings and goings of servants. But the bustle is long gone. The house has not been lived in for some 200 years, although it was kept in good repair by benevolent Victorian owners who lived in a more modern house not far away. They ensured the survival of this spacious hall, lit by its two rows of tall Gothic windows, its roof is supported by great cruck timbers tied together by pairs of horizontal collars and curving braces. This structure creates a beautiful space and even in its emptiness, the hall at Stokesay is one of the most evocative rooms in England.

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Having been cared for by the Allcroft family from 1869 to 1986, Stokesay has since been under the guardianship of English Heritage.

Ashby St Ledgers, Northamptonshire

Plotters' place
I remember that when I was a child my parents had a book with a picture of this gatehouse in it. The gatehouse was identified as belonging to the manor house at Ashby St Ledgers in Northamptonshire, and the reason it was illustrated was because this house was the home of Robert Catesby, leader of the group of Catholics who plotted to blow up Parliament and James I on November 5th 1605 in the hope of then installing the king’s nine-year-old daughter as a Catholic head of state. Plots of all kinds fascinated me, especially the Gunpowder Plot, not because of any Catholic or republican sympathies but because it was the cause of fireworks, bonfires, Guys, sausages, and other delights.* I imagined people plotting in the upper room of this gatehouse, from which, no doubt, they’d be able to escape in a hurry if royal spies got wind of their scheming.

When I finally visited Ashby St Ledgers, I was amazed that the gatehouse forms a tiny part of the whole house, which is huge – more like a cluster of large houses than a single dwelling. But being near the road, the gatehouse is indeed a good place for plotters, who could both keep a lookout and decamp quickly if they needed to. Its simple architecture, a good deal more rustic than that of the main house, also lends it a useful air of innocence. When the plot was discovered, Robert Catesby fled from London and when trying to make a stand against his pursuers in Staffordshire was shot dead. I must admit that I was pleased to find that his gatehouse had survived.

*My overseas readers may need to know that these things, especially fireworks, attend the yearly celebrations of the discovery of the plot on November 5th. Fireworks are lit all over the country, but the towns of Sussex, where pyrotechnics become spectacle on the grandest of scales, excel in the art of whiz, flash, and bang.

Minster Lovell, Oxfordshire

The ruined 15th-century manor house at Minster Lovell is an idyllic spot for picnicking, kingfisher-spotting, and meditating on the passing of time. Although the years haven’t been kind to the house – it seems to have been dismantled in the 18th century and the remains used as farm buildings – the wonderful circular dovecote is still very much intact.

Hundreds of nest holes line the walls and an impressive bit of carpentry holds together the roof, with its central lantern, through which the birds could come and go. On a hot summer’s day it’s cool inside the substantial stone wall, which is thick enough to accommodate nest holes almost an arm’s-length in depth.

That was quite deep enough, as it was the dovecote-keeper’s job to reach into the nest holes and pull out the young pigeons – known as squabs – when they were well grown and plump, but not quite ready to fly. The squabs were harvested during the breeding season (roughly March to October), providing the Lord of the Manor with a source of tasty meat. In the Middle Ages only barons, manorial lords, and abbots were allowed to keep a dovecote, so pigeon-meat was a luxury for the upper-classes, not, as is sometimes said, a winter supplement to the diet of the poor.

Dovecotes come in several different shapes. Oxfordshire alone has wonderful round, octagonal, and rectangular examples. As working farmyard buildings, they’re not usually highly decorated, but the timber-work required to roof a round or eight-sided building often has an intricacy of its own. Thanks to Neil Philip of Adventures in the Print Trade for introducing me to this one, and for providing the picture. And while I’m at it, thanks too to Emma Bradford for a picnic worthy of the Lord of the Manor.

Toddington, Gloucestershire

Here in the Cotswolds, celebrity neighbours are so common they’re usually greeted with a shrug. Half the royal family lives round here, after all. (‘Tetbury man to wed’ was the local paper’s laconic headline when Charles and Camilla announced that the time had come to put their relationship on a more formal footing.) So the revelation that no-longer-Young British Artist Damien Hirst was buying Toddington Manor hardly raised an eyebrow in these parts, except among those for whom sharks, dot paintings, and diamond-studded skulls aren’t the last word in art.

But a few of us rejoiced. Toddington Manor is a stunning Victorian house that has been empty and unloved for years. It was designed by its first owner, Charles Hanbury Tracy, who was on the committee that chose Barry’s design for the then-new Houses of Parliament. The building has more than a touch of the Houses of Parliament about it – late-Gothic windows and tower, some stunning gargoyles, a cloister corridor, lots of Gothic details inside and out.

It’s very grand, but it isn’t exactly homely. Which is why, I think, that many of the well-heeled who’ve considered it have backed out. The rooms are grandiose – but not that big. The main route around the house is the cloister, which is more churchy than housey. Putting en suites in upstairs would cause all kinds of conservation nightmares. And the repair bill must be stratospheric. What it needs is an owner who’s rich, but doesn’t just want to live there.

Enter Mr Hirst and his art. He plans to restore the house and use it to show off his collection. And he seems to be getting on with the task in hand. Shortly after he bought the place, the whole house was covered by the world’s biggest span of scaffolding. Now he’s sheathing the place in plastic too. It looks as if he’s commissioned Christo and Jeanne-Claude, wrap-artists extraordinaire, to do what they did to the Reichstag a few years back. But it’s probably an indication that there’s some serious restoration going on in there. Roll on the time when the work’s done and we can visit the house. After all, if we don’t like the art, we can still admire the gargoyles and the stained glass. As Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud is fond of saying, ‘It might just work.’

Toddington Manor: the house as it was