Building record 1240400000 - GREAT PEDNOR MANOR

Grade II. Former farmhouse. C16 enlarged and refronted C18. Timber framed core. Red brick with some grey headers. Old tile roof hipped at north east corner, one chimney with three diagonal shafts, another to north of old bricks with three projecting brick shafts each side. Two storeys first floor band. Modern leaded casements, some under segmental arched heads, altogether nine to east elevation. Door left of centre under tiled hood. Rear wing with exposed timber framing to gable, brick infill, half hipped tiled roof. Interior: said to have C17 wall paintings. (Records of Bucks Vol 15 (1947) pp 91-93.)(B1).
Surviving painted studs now in a ground floor room and the kitchen suggest that the house was probably extensively decorated in the 16th century with an interlaced strapwork design on a floral background with a series of narrow friezes above. In the kitchen the decoration has an upper frieze with a strapwork motif and bold chevrons below (B2).
Wall painting across an entire wall in an upper room discovered during alterations in 1939 and recorded by Clive Rouse. The decoration may extend onto two adjacent walls. Design is an elaborate all-over pattern of interlacing quatrefoils in greeny-yellow outlined in black and blue-green enclosing sprays of flowers and foliage, with roses surrounded by a ring of dots in the spaces between the quatrefoils, all on a salmony-pink background. A deep plinth or skirting of guilloche with a top border is in cream on purplish red. At the top is a frieze of panels enclosed by interlacing guilloche, seperated by strapwork in red outlined with white, the panels having blackletter texts from Psalms 66 and 67. The texts are based on metrical versions of the Psalms by Thomas Sternhold and by John Hopkins and suggest that the painting dates from between 1562 and 1580. Additional wall painting in a similar design, though with angular interlace, also noted in the kitchen (B3).