Llangattock Manor with its associated garden terrace

Cadw's description

Location

Approximately 1km N of The Hendre, and close to the church of St Cadoc, on a slope overlooking rolling countryside to the W, from which it is a conspicuous feature in the landscape.

History

Built 1877-80 by T.H.Wyatt for J.A. Rolls of The Hendre on the site of the C17 manor house of the Evans family; intended as a dower house but used as the vicarage to St Cadoc's church. Now subdivided and internally partly remodelled, the service wings (etc) at the N end being divided into 3 flats.

Exterior

A rambling Jacobethan edifice. Built of coursed irregular rubble with Bath stone dressings and roofs of brown tiles. The plan, on a NW-SE axis, is irregular, consisting of a main entrance block facing NE with a single gabled wing set back at the SE end (and an original conservatory attached to that), 2 gabled wings at the NW end, the first narrow and set back and the second broad and advanced, the latter with a secondary wing projected from the front and a former kitchen attached to the NW corner. The entrance block and its SE wing are 2-storeyed but the rest is 3-storeyed to roughly the same height, except for the former kitchen which is single-storeyed. The main features of the NE entrance front (which makes less successful use of the historic style than the garden front) are the 3-bay entrance block which has a 2-storey gabled porch in the centre, with a moulded Tudor-arched doorway under a 3-light overlight, a chamfered string-course (carried round the whole building, stepping up and down), a re-set C17 shield of arms of the Evans family above the doorway, and a 3-light mullioned window at 1st floor; and to the left of the porch a disproportionately large 9-light 3-stage mullion-and-transom stairwindow; otherwise, this facade has various 1-light windows with transoms and 2-light mullioned windows; and there is a service doorway at ground floor of the recessed wing. The secondary wing to the front of the NW wing, of 2 lower storeys, has 3 gabled dormers but otherwise altered openings. The W (garden) front makes more creative and more convincing use of C17 style. Exclusive of the kitchen and the conservatory it is a 6-bay composition, no two bays the same, generously fenestrated with a mixture of large mullion-and-transom windows, mullioned windows and cross-windows; with a projected 3-storey gable to the service wing at the NW end, a canted 2-storey bay to the right-hand of the entrance block, 2 hipped half-dormers, and quoined chimney stacks with clustered diamond-set shafts. At the SE end is an ashlar-built conservatory with a symmetrical 3-window Gothick-style facade including a central gablet with a finial; while at the other end, projecting and slightly wrapped round the NW wing, is a single-storey hipped-roofed kitchen wing which has cross-window under a hipped dormer, and a small square 2-stage ventilator with a red-tiled lower stage, short plastered upper stage with circular vent-holes, and a tiled pyramidal roof with a metal finial. Crossing the whole facade except the gable of NW wing is a paved terrace approximately 2m high, faced with rubble, protected by a balustrade of geometrical terracotta openwork, and with a stone staircase projected from the centre.

Interior

The main range retains most of its original features, including marble fireplaces and plaster cornices with floreated enrichment in the main ground-floor rooms. (The staircase is believed to have been repaired or restored following military occupation of the house during the Second World War.) In the conservatory is a pump delivering water from a tank beneath it which receives rainwater from the roof.

Reason for designation

Included as an interesting essay in Victorian vernacular revival style, and for its historical associations with the Rolls family of The Hendre.