The Manor House and outbuildings, game larder and ha-ha, Little Barford, Little Barford, Bedford

Summary

The Manor House with its Ha-Ha and Game Larder, a multi-phased country house with a remodelling attributed to John Usher in around 1870.

Description

The Manor House with its Ha-Ha and Game Larder, a multi-phased country house with a remodelling attributed to John Usher in around 1870.

MATERIALS

The walls are constructed chiefly of gault brick with stone dressings, and the roofs are covered in plain tiles. There are some areas of red brick, and small areas of the roof are covered in Welsh slate.

PLAN

The higher status areas of the house are grouped around the south end of the building, with lower status or service areas at the north end. All rooms are arranged around a long spinal corridor.

EXTERIOR

The principal elevation faces east and is twelve bays long. At the left-hand side there are three bays with a central entrance porch (castellated and featuring the arms of the Alington family). The next three bays project forwards beneath gabled roofs of varied widths, the right-hand bay extending further forward than the others. At ground floor the left-hand side of these projecting bays is canted and rises through large slabs of limestone to form a moulded, mitred corner. Further right are two single storey bays beneath a pyramidal roof (historically, the kitchen). Adjoining this is a gabled cross-wing with a ground floor entrance and a first-floor wooden oriel window. This cross-wing forms one side of a horseshoe shaped service yard which once featured a covered walkway or pentice but is now missing its roof. The right-hand side of the service yard is a single-storey range with a slate roof that forms the north end of the building. It has a pair of wooden double-doors on its south elevation.

The north elevation is three bays wide and a single storey high and comprises the terminal range of the service yard. It is walled in red brick laid in Flemish bond and has a roof covered in Welsh slate. There is a single opening to the right of centre: a wooden hatch at window height.

The west elevation faces across an open expanse towards the Church of St Denys. It is twelve bays long. At the left-hand side, for one bay only, is the sole single storey element of the south elevation: the red-brick wall of the terminal range of the service yard, with a doorway and two windows. The red brick continues to form the ground floor of the adjoining two bays, with gault brick above. The upper floor has three windows, with a central dormer. The next three bays are taller and also show differences in the brickwork between ground and first floors. There are two (partly rebuilt) dormers, and at ground floor there is a doorway beneath a segmental brick arch. The next two bays are higher again than those to their left and have two roof dormers. At ground floor level on the right-hand side a small projection extends outwards to the level of the two gabled bays that stand alongside. These have a castellated bay window at ground floor, running across both bays. The final two bays of the building stand further forwards and have a single window at ground floor, with two large dormers at first floor.

The south elevation is three gabled bays wide, the left-hand gable standing slightly further back than the other two. The left gable has a canted bay window at ground floor with a castellated parapet. The right-hand gable has a chimney stack rising through its centre. On the left of the chimney running across to the middle bay at ground floor, the remains of a weather detail combined with some pale brickwork and a surviving patch of tiled flooring indicate the location of a lost verandah.

The exterior is characterised by a considerable degree of architectural variety within a broad Gothic vocabulary, consistent with Usher’s ‘rogue’-ish body of work. Features of note include the carved details of the barge boards around the gables, the variety of window openings (some wooden, some brick, some narrow, some wide, some cruciform); and the attention paid to chimneys, some of which rise directly from the first floors, a small number have elaborate Gothic terracotta designs, while others have been rebuilt at the upper stages.

INTERIOR

The principal entrance leads through a porch with a tiled floor into an open stair hall that connects to the long spinal corridor around which the whole building is organised. Near to the stair hall, along the corridor, a door covered in green baize marks a division between the high-status areas of the house (intended for use by the owners and their guests), and the working areas of the building beyond it.

The only room directly accessed from the ground floor of the stair hall was, historically, the library. This adjoined a ‘boudoir’ which neighboured a drawing room. There was a dining room on the west side of the corridor, and a billiard room on the east side. The layout of these rooms is still part of the plan form. Many retain historic features, such as cornices, skirting boards, picture rails, fireplaces and shutters, though the extent of the survival of these features does vary. The billiard room connects directly to a gun room, with its gun rack intact.

The working areas of the ground floor, beyond the green baize door, are characterised by more hard-wearing fittings including a flagstone floor running through the spinal corridor. The butler’s pantry, housekeeper’s room, butler’s bedroom, dairy and larder run along the west of the corridor; the gun room, pantry, kitchen and scullery occupy the east side. The butler’s pantry contains a fine Gothic revival fireplace, and connects to a strong room originally for silverware. The dairy has stone floors and large slate shelves. There are meat hooks in the larder. There are shelves and cupboards of a hardwearing quality in most of these areas. The kitchen has an airy pyramidal roof with a louvred vent at its apex. A large fireplace survives at the south end. The wall it shares with the spinal corridor features a serving hatch with foldable shelves fixed to the corridor wall to allow food to be placed for service. The scullery retains its copper boiler and cast iron range. At the end of the corridor, beyond a C19 servants’ WC, is the servants’ hall which has a large fireplace (the grate has been removed), and fitted cupboards with some recycled joinery features. In the same room there are sliding horizontal window shutters. Attached to the end of the servants’ hall, but accessed from the outside, is a single storey range with a coal shed at the east end (later used as an oil store), a former boiler shed in the middle (not inspected), and a WC at the west end accessed externally (not inspected).

The first floor of the house contains a great many bedrooms, at least one of which was historically used as a dressing room and another as a school room for the children of the house. They contain a variety of surviving historic features, including fireplaces from the 1870s through to the 1930s or 40s, bell pushes for summoning servants, skirting boards, cornices, architraves and doors (some four, some six panelled, and a small number of very high-quality hardwood doors of around 1800). The upper landing, accessed through an archway at the top of the stair hall, is naturally lit by a large roof lantern. There are a number of WCs and bathrooms at first floor that retain historic sanitaryware from the later C19 and early C20. Close to the attic stair is a large linen store with seven cupboards, nearby to the housemaid’s parlour.

The first floor of the house displays evidence of the building’s phased evolution from the earlier rectory. The clearest evidence lies around the large arcaded circulation space north of the stair hall. This substantial arcade of four-centred arches is an architectural feature of the building today, but is likely to be a structural wall that originated as part of the rectory. The landing east of the arcade, leading to the housemaid’s parlour, also contains a large curving buttress. These features, the idiosyncratic plan form of the southern end of the building, and the changing ceiling heights of the southern bedrooms all indicate that the manor house retains structural elements of the earlier rectory.

The attic is six bays in length and contains bedrooms historically used by servants, as well as a store cupboard and a water tank. Historic fittings such as fireplaces, doors and wardrobes survive, as well as original wallpaper imitating green tiles.

The cellars are brick built with some timber posts. The brickwork is predominantly gault brick, though there are some sections of red brick that suggest the cellars may have originated as part of the older rectory. One long arm of the cellar leads to a blocked window and sealed light-well on the east side of the building.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES

The Game Larder:

A detached game larder stands a few metres east of the kitchen and pantry. It is a small single-storey rectangular structure formed of a gault brick plinth laid in Flemish bond, ventilated timber walls (unglazed, with mesh coverings), and a hipped roof covered in Welsh slate with a louvred ridge. There is a partition with a doorway at the centre of the larder, dividing the two principal areas: the north side provided the hanging space with numerous hooks; the south side has slate shelves used for selecting birds for hanging and preparing carcasses for the kitchen. The floors on both sides are tiled, though many have been lost, and the timber partitions are formed of matchboard panels.

The Ha-Ha:

A ha-ha of part-stone and part-brick construction runs from the church path at the north-west of the house in an arc around to the former carriage drive at the south-east. A curving boundary separating the gardens of the former rectory from adjacent pasture is indicated on the 1840 tithe map and could indicate the existence of a ha-ha at that time, though its course does not directly correspond to the structure in place today. Roughly 70m of wall at the north-western end is built of uncoursed rubble sandstone and ironstone, with some dressed stone elements that may have been recycled from an earlier structure. Beyond this, the wall is built of gault brick laid in monk bond. The brick wall has in parts an additional skin of mid-C20 London Brick Company flettons laid in English bond. At the time of inspection (2022), the highest parts of the ha-ha were around 1.2m, though closer to the south-eastern terminus the wall was largely concealed by in-fill.

History

The village of Little Barford lies in the valley of the River Great Ouse. At the time of the Domesday survey (1086) Little Barford contained two manors. The larger, which had a watermill on the river, was owned by Ramsey Abbey from the C12 until the Dissolution of the Abbey in 1539. By the mid-C18 it was owned by a Mr Hutchinson and in 1829 the estate passed to Rev. William Alington whose descendants remained owners throughout the C20. The second, smaller manor was part of the manor of Eaton (later Eaton Socon) and until at least the late C13 the Beauchamp family were lords of the manor. It was sold to Henry South in 1706 who later sold it to Mr Hutchinson, thus combining the two properties.

The only standing building to have survived from the medieval settlement was the parish church (Grade II* listed). A moat to its north may indicate the site of the medieval manor.

By the mid-C18 the settlement consisted of a scatter of buildings along tracks leading from Barford Road to the church. Workers’ housing was also built along the Barford Road. To the south of the church was a manor house (referred to as the Old Manor), probably constructed as a replacement for a dwelling on the moat in the later C18. By the early C19 some of the earlier buildings near the Old Manor appear to have been removed.

In 1822 the Rev’d John Alington became Rector of the Church of St Denys. Alington later inherited the lordship of the manor of Little Barford through his maternal grandfather (John Williamson of Baldock, d.1830), thereby bringing the old manor house and the rectory under the same ownership. When he died in 1863 the rectory passed to his successor, Nathaniel Royd, while the old manor went to his son, William. Royd and William Alington exchanged properties in 1866 and the former rectory became the new Manor House.

A terrier of 1712 describes the old rectory on the site of the present Manor House as a timber [framed] building with a tiled roof. There was a kitchen, cellar, dairy and sinkhouse all with brick floors, and a smaller parlour, and a pantry with boarded floors. There were five bedrooms and two closets upstairs. This relatively modest building had evidently been extended, perhaps by the Alingtons, when it was mapped in 1840 for the Tithe apportionment of Little Barford. At that date the building resembled the present structure in its length and position, with a long principal range running roughly north-south with a U-shaped service wing at the north end.

Between 1866 and his death in 1874, William Alington significantly remodelled the house. The design has been attributed to John Usher (1822-1904). Structural elements originating from the earlier building appear to have been retained and reused in the remodelled house. Though unified to some extent by gothicising details, the house is ultimately a multi-phase building with its origins reaching back to the early C19 or perhaps as early as the C18. The remodelling of the house at that time coincided with an expansion of the manor’s facilities, including the projection of a coach house and stables, a game larder, and the construction (or reconstruction) of a ha-ha. The result was a much-aggrandised house with significant potential for country sports, especially shooting parties.

In 1927 a detailed description of the building under the Rating and Valuation Act (1925) described its layout as follows: A hall (“very, very good”) led off an entrance porch. On the ground floor there was a library and a boudoir for the Lady of the Manor, a dining room and drawing room. The offices comprised: a pantry and strong room; the housekeeper’s room; the butler’s bedroom; a dairy; a larder; a WC; the servants’ hall; a scullery; a kitchen (“good”); a wine cellar; a wine room; a gun room; a lavatory and another WC; and a billiard room which was “not used as such”.

The first floor comprised: a double bedroom over the library; a single bedroom over the boudoir; a double bedroom over the drawing room; a dressing room; two single bedrooms; an old school room; a “very small” bedroom; a “poor” double bedroom; a 'room which was not used'; a servants’ WC; a tiled servants’ bathroom; a tiled family bathroom with a WC; further small double- and single-bedrooms; a half-tiled bathroom; a half-tiled bathroom with lavatory bowl; a house maid’s parlour; a single bedroom with a lavatory bowl and another WC. In the attics lay seven maids’ rooms and a box room.

The valuer commented: “Exterior of House not very good”. Overall, he commented: “Electric light, no bad disadvantages but rooms mostly small and a lot of passage. Property added to. Grounds very small and kitchen garden some distance away. Poor locality”.

The building has been little altered since that description. A small verandah which once adjoined the south-east room (the library in 1925) has been demolished; the roof has been recovered; two dormers have been partially rebuilt; and some original chimneys have been replaced.

John Usher (1822-1904) lived and died in Bedfordshire where he completed most of his architectural works. He commenced practice in Bedford around 1847-50 and later went into practice with his nephew, Alfred Ernest Anthony, in 1880. Wildman grouped his output with the other ‘rogue’ goths of the mid-Victorian era. In around 1856 he remodelled and extended Barford House in Great Barford (now Grade II listed). There are a number of other listed buildings designed by Usher, including Clapham Park House, and the old rectory at Blunham (both Grade II).

Reasons for Listing

The Manor House with its Ha-Ha and Game Larder, a multi-phased country house with a remodelling attributed to John Usher in around 1870, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* For the architectural quality of the C19 remodelling of the house, with its unifying Gothic exterior;
* For the intact survival of its plan form and complete set of service areas;
* For the presence of high quality internal features, such as finely produced Georgian six-panelled doors.

Historic interest:

* As a C19 country house developed from the surviving core of a C18 rectory and the legibility of the building's evolution;
* For the high degree of survival in the building's historic fabric;
* As the manor house of a well-surviving estate village.

Group value:

* For its strong functional relationship to the Coach House and Stables, and to the Motor House that form part of the manorial complex at Little Barford.

External Links

Historic England Listing

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.