Manor House (Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons) Great Milton, England

Text courtesy of Historic England. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

GREAT MILTON CHURCH ROAD SP60SW (East side) 5/105 The Manor House and garden 18/07/63 walls to rear

GV II*

Manor house, now hotel. Late C15, late C16/early C17 and late C17; much extended about 1908 by E.P. Warren. Limestone rubble with some ashlar dressings; old plain-tile roof and brick stacks. H-plan. 2 storeys plus attics. Front has low 3-window central range, roughcast at first floor, with doorway to left of centre. Old double-boarded door has moulded frame and early C18 flat hood on wooden consoles. 3 roof dormers, front stack and all casements are C20, C17 stack with 4 diagonal shafts to right. Late C17 projecting cross wing to left has ashlar storey bands and flush banding. It retains a 2-light stone mullioned window with label in the gable, but has been much altered. Corresponding early C17 wing to right has been rebuilt as central main entrance of extended house, but retains two 2-light mullioned windows in its left return wall; the lower with label, the upper with straight hood and both having ovolo chamfers. Rear has 4 gables, the central pair a C17 infilling of the H-plan with several straight-chamfered mullioned windows and at least one original cross window. The rear of the left wing has its original pattern of cross windows, the right wing has 4-light mullioned windows with ovolo chamfers and there are similar windows in a bay further to the right and flush with the gable. The rear entrance, opposite the front door, has an old 2-panel door. The remainder of the house is in similar mullioned style with dressings of orange Cotswold stone and irregular parapeted gables. Interior: Several bolection-moulded fireplaces and one with a Tudor arch and recessed spandrels; a panelled room with pulvinated frieze; late C17 dogleg stair with heavy turned balusters and ball finials to the newels. The central range has the remains of a through passage with a Tudor-arched wooden door frame at the rear and an arched opening to the left. The floor with heavy chamfered and stopped joists to right of the passage is an early C17 insertion into an open hall built 1474-7, of which there survive some heavily jowled posts at first floor and the tie beams (and possibly more) of the roof. The hall was built for William Radmyld. Partly C17 rear garden of coursed limestone rubble extends from left of house and across rear of first garden, passing around two sides of a square pond at a lower level. Stone steps to pond lead down through a Tudor-arched doorway with recessed spandrels and 3 rectangular openings with baluster mullions give view outwards. There is also a plainer 4-centre arched doorway. On one angle of the wall is a stone column with square head bearing a sundial on one face; probably C17. (V.C.H.: Oxfordshire, Vol.VII, p.120j Buildings of England: Oxfordshire, p.622; J.H. Harvey, 'Great Milton, Oxfordshire; and Thorncroft, Surrey ..', J. Brit. Archaeol. Ass. Ser. 3, Vol.XVIII (1955), 42-56).

Listing NGR: SP6286202383