UK market review - number 28, 2011

A Manor House is in a way, exactly what it says on the tin: the house of the manor. A manor is a legal title to land held from an overlord and ultimately, from the crown. It dates back to the Anglo-Saxon period, though, following the Norman were redistributed by William I and recorded in the Domesday Book. An essential part of the feudal system, the lord of a manor had both rights and duties, including military service and other payments to an overlord. The manor house in the Norman era would usually consist of an open hall and a chamber block with a withdrawing chamber, usually on the first floor. The great hall was a living room but also somewhere that a manor court could be held – a tradition that continued in some places up to the 19th century.

In the Norman era, hall and chambers were usually separate buildings, but over time they were merged, so the chamber was situated at one end of the great hall with a kitchen, buttery and pantry (for the service of wine and bread) at the other end. These pre-17th century manor houses would be built of stone or be timber-framed, depending on the availability of local building materials; although there would be elements of both in any building. Steep-roofed and gabled, it is these houses of the 14th to 16th centuries that most of us think of when we hear the phrase 'manor house'. The village tended to grow around the manor house, and so, with the parish church, is often found at the centre of a settlement. During the 17th century, the nature of landholding and ownership had changed. Lordships of the manor still conferred status but, in many areas, the formal, legal role of the manor house declined. Thus old manor houses were adapted or replaced by houses in new styles, as Classical houses in brick or stone in the eighteenth century, or in historical styles, such as Gothic Revival or neo-Jacobean in the nineteenth. These stand out for their size and importance in the village, rather than for the formula of the open great hall. Indeed, in adaptations of earlier manor houses, the great hall was often divided horizontally to provide bedrooms above and warmer rooms below. The appellation Manor House may apply to houses in every style – think of Waddesdon Manor in French chateau style in the late 19th century – but it always applies to a house of distinction.