Building record 0072001000 - TYTHROP HOUSE

Dimensions - Width 30m, Length 40m.
Sometimes called Kingsey (B1).
Account of view by Henry Winstanley 1680 (B5).
Grade I. Country house. Early C17 E-plan house, remodelled by 1680. Interior plaster work by William Morris I, Katherine Morris and William Morris II, 1730s. Altered early C19 and restored 1960s. Brick, the bulk of the north front stuccoed with incised masonry lines. Timber modillion cornices. Hipped tiled roofs. 2 storeys plus dormers and basement under early C17 parts. South or garden front of 9 bays with projecting centre bay carried up to gabled attic storey window with segmental pediment. East front of 9 bays, the centre 3 set forward with 3rd storey crowned by balustrade. North or entrance front has 3 bay projecting wings each end and 5 bay centre with modern pedimented porch flanked by colonnade. West elevation has single storey 3 bay addition at south west. Plinth, band course and modillion cornice surrounds house, except 3 storey centre of east front which has moulded brick cornice and pulvinated frieze between 2nd and 3rd storeys. C19 sashes, except north front, where 5 centre bays have 1730s sashes with thick glazing bars. South front has 3 gabled leaded-light dormers either side of centrepiece and evidence of Caroline cement architraves to previous cross casement windows. Central glazed door in stone doorcase of 2 Corinthian columns, entablature, bracketed dentil cornice and segmental pediment. First floor window architraved with enriched scroll supports. East front has one dormer each side of raised centre bays. Left hand middle bay windows blank, outer windows of right bays blank windows. End walls of wings on north front brick with 2 sashes each. Early C18 sashes on north front have keystones. West elevation has 6 windows to first floor, only centre 2 glazed, others blank. 2 sashes only on ground floor. Stacks tall with panelled faces and moulded cornice heads. Interior. Full height Hall with first floor balustraded balcony on all four sides, supported on large acanthus modillion brackets. Egg and dart cornices. Plasterwork by Morris includes portrait medallions of Homer, Virgil (?) Milton and Pope. To west of hall is Staircase Bay with very fine elaborate pierced balustrade panels to staircase carved in floral scrolls inhabited by wyverns and snakes. Carved in elm. Foliage carved strings and soffits with egg and dart corniced hand rails. Later acanthus console to lowest newel. Dogleg plan. Ornate pendants below newels. Plaster work panels and full length figures of Juno and Athena, busts of Mercury, Mars and Zeus. Timber doorcases and overdoors with bay leaf pulvinated friezes and door surrounds. Corniced tops. Modillion cornice. Staircase carving attributed to Edward Pierce II (1630-95), mainly on stylistic grounds (c.f. Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire). Centre room on first floor south front has pre- 1680 timber cornice with pulvinated bay leaf frieze below box cornice. Bay leaf architraved doorcases. Other rooms on both floors have modillion box cornices and egg and dart corniced dado rails and enriched skirting boards. Upstairs rooms in west wing have dentil cornices and acanthus friezed dado rails. Left hand ground floor room has marble fireplace from Ashburnham House with Corinthian order. Victorian reeded doorcases. Centre ground floor room has fireplace with console brackets and festoons, and overmantel with mirror in lugged surround flanked by pilasters and topped by scroll pediment, probably 1730s. Right ground floor room has egg and dart architraved windows. Overdoors with foliage friezes below cornices. Hall has Rococo centrepiece plaster work to ceiling later than rest of scheme. The history of the house is complex, but appears to have been built for Henry Spiller after 1619. The original one room deep E-plan house with hall and staircase bay was doubled in thickness by the addition of a suite of rooms along the south before 1680 and the earlier house altered and remodelled for James Herbert I, 6th child of the 4th Earl of Pembroke, who died in 1676, to be succeeded by his son, also James. James Herbert IV, who owned Tythrop from 1721 to his death in 1749 employed the Morris family to redecorate the interior. In the late 18th or early 19th century the house was rendered and the attic storey replaced by a low pitched slate roofed attic. The original roof form was reinstated in 1960s, and the render removed from all but the north front. The east, west fronts and the north elevations of the wings were cased in new brickwork. County Life, 27 February 1904. An engraving by Henry Winstanley dated 1680 shows Tythrop and its stable block in detail, including leaded cross casement windows (B6).
Tythrope House was requisitioned and used by troops during the war (B7).