Wortham Manor
| Wortham Manor | |
|
Landmark Trust | |
|---|---|
 Wortham Manor | |
| Grid reference: | SX382869 |
| Location: | 50°39’35"N, 4°17’26"W |
| Information | |
| Website: | Wrotham Manor |
Wortham Manor is late mediæval and later Tudor manor house in Lifton in west Devon. It is owned by the Landmark Trust and let out as a holiday and function venue, rather at the upper end of the scale. It is a Grade I listed building.[1]
The house stands within its own extensive grounds, all in rolling, rural surroundings.
History and architecture
This grand granite-built house spoke of the high status locally of its owners in its own age, but was left to decline, becoming a farmhouse in later ages so that it was barely known by architectural historians until the twentieth century.
In 1943, the architect Philip Tilden recognised the age and value of the house, and bought it himself a few years later. He spent many months, with the help of two German prisoners of war, removing plaster ceilings to expose the exceptional carved oak ones that can be seen today.
Tilden described Wortham as one of the most beautiful houses of the late 15th century that he had ever seen.
The origins of the house are uncertain. It may have begun as a typical mediæval manor house, with an open hall at its centre and a short wing at its east end containing a solar chamber on the first floor. The hall was entered through the fine north porch with its decorative carving dated to about 1450.
The great hall and the magnificent chamber above it are probably the work of John Dinham, and would date to soon after 1500. Dinham was the cousin of Dame Thomasine of Week St Mary, who founded in the village of her birth The College (another building in the care of the Landmark Trust).
The Tudor age brought change, with extensive modernisation probably in the first quarter of the 16th century: a floor was inserted into the open hall to create an upper and lower hall and a new newel stair in a turret added onto the back or south wall of the hall. The former service rooms were turned into a parlour with a new ceiling similar in detail to that in the hall.
The remodelling into a mere farmhouse took place after 1750.
Like Dame Thomasine, John Dinham had lived and prospered in London. In 1533, when an old man, he was pressed to take a knighthood, but declined.
Outside links
- Wrotham Manor – Landmark Trust