Westwood Manor: A Fifteenth-Century Manor House in Wiltshire
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- English
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page12 sections
History
Westwood Manor is a fifteenth-century manor house in Westwood, near Bradford-on-Avon, United Kingdom. Its surviving core belongs to an enlargement carried out around 1480, when Thomas Culverhouse expanded an earlier building for the Winchester Priory estate. The house developed through later additions and alterations, preserving a record of changing domestic arrangements from the late medieval period onward.
Winchester Priory and early leaseholders
The manor was originally owned by Winchester Priory and leased to a succession of sharecroppers. Thomas Culverhouse managed the estate until about 1485 and enlarged the earlier house around 1480. The lower southern end of the west wing may belong to an earlier phase than the oldest surviving part of the building.
By 1518, the lease was held by Thomas Horton, a prosperous local tailor who also owned a cloth mill at Iford. Horton made extensive changes to the interiors and is thought to have improved the nearby village church. Sixteenth-century additions and later alterations continued to modify the house.
John Farewell’s remodelling
John Farewell lived at Westwood Manor from 1616 to 1642 and substantially reshaped the compact house. His work changed several rooms, raised the hall floor to create an upper room, and added the two-storey porch and stair turret. A further wing at right angles to the eastern end probably contained kitchens and other service rooms. This wing was demolished in the late nineteenth century, after which the house entered a period of decline.
Edgar Graham Lister and later stewardship
Edgar Graham Lister acquired Westwood Manor in 1911 and undertook extensive restoration. A diplomat at the Ottoman court and an expert in needlepoint, he introduced panelling from Keevil Manor House, redesigned the gardens, and assembled furniture, musical instruments, and tapestries for the house. Much of the furniture was upholstered in Florentine needlework.
After Lister’s death in 1956, he left Westwood Manor to the National Trust, a British charity that cares for historic buildings and landscapes. The property has remained in National Trust ownership since that year, with a tenant occupying and administering it on the Trust’s behalf. Westwood Manor became a Grade I listed building on 13 November 1962. Grade I is England’s highest category of statutory protection for buildings of exceptional architectural or historic interest.
Remains
Plan and exterior
Westwood Manor survives as a compact, two-storey L-shaped house. Its walls are plastered over rubble stone, and the building has a slate roof with leaded verges and stone chimneys. The principal front is marked by a two-storey porch with a broad, flattened Tudor-arched doorway and a string course. The former eastern service wing stood at right angles to the main building and probably housed kitchens and other service rooms before its demolition in the late nineteenth century.
Interior rooms and staircases
The King’s Room
The early seventeenth-century parlour is known as the King’s Room. It has a fireplace dating from the 1720s and a decorated plaster ceiling divided into panels. Ribbed ornament, fruit, and acorns enrich the ceiling design.
Staircases and first-floor chambers
The stair turret contains a spiral staircase with renewed steps. A separate seventeenth-century staircase at the end of the hall leads to the first floor. An early seventeenth-century chamber survives there with a low decorated plaster ceiling, a frieze, and mouldings beneath it.
The western bedroom
The bedroom at the western end has a plaster ceiling divided into four sections and decorated with pointed ribbed patterns, birds, and shells. Its stone fireplace has a Tudor-arched opening, a plaster surround, and three projecting sections of entablature.
Library and sitting room
The library occupies the north-west corner and is entered through a late sixteenth-century doorway with a plaster arch. The sitting room in the southern wing contains sixteenth-century stained glass.
Gardens and collections
Lister’s restoration shaped both the contents of the house and its grounds. The interior includes the panelling brought from Keevil Manor House, together with collections of fine furniture, musical instruments, and tapestries. The gardens include topiary, the practice of clipping shrubs or trees into ornamental shapes.
