Building record 0103401001 - TAPLOW COURT

MANOR HOUSE WAS SOLD IN 1700 TO LORD ORKNEY. HE ALTERED/REBUILT (NOT CLEAR WHICH) & THEN SOLD IN 1852 TO PASCOE GRENFELL. HE ENLARGED & ALTERED HOUSE TO ITS PRESENT CONDITION (B1-3).
NO SIGN OF PRE-C18 FABRIC IN PRESENT BUILDING. ORKNEYS BUILT NORMAN SALOON & STARTED GOTHICISATION IN EARLY C19. IN 1855 PASCOE GRENFELL ADDED AN ATTIC STOREY & NEW W FRONT & S WING & NEW SERVICE WING, DESIGNED BY WILLIAM BURN (B2).
(DESCRIPTION)(B3-4).
Grade II. Dated 1855. The exterior in an early Tudor style, but the interior (with its central glazed hall rising the full height of the house) in a Romanesque style. Red brick; stone dressings; slate roof. Four storeys with 2 stone stringcourses carried round the building as drip moulds over the windows. Central projection with porch. Heavy oak door set in recess with Norman arch. Four windows one above the other. Corner chimneys corbelled out from the 2nd floor. On left, a bay window through 3 storeys; on right, windows with mullions and, on ground and 1st floors, transoms too. To the left and at right angles to the house, the stable court and offices. The back wing extends along the side of the churchyard of the old parish church of St Nicholas and is joined to the house by an octagonal tower. Most of the buildings red brick with slate roofs and 2 storeys high. The range facing the courtyard of the house with 4 gables reach- ing above eaves level and a clock turret over the archway (B6).
At the outbreak of the War in 1939, the buildings housed children of nursery-school age, evacuated from London. The house was later occupied by a girl's school until shortly before 1946 when it was leased by British Telecommunications Research Limited (later Plessey Telecommunications Research Ltd) to be used as an advanced research centre (B9).
Excavation for a lift pit in 2007 within the house found the foundations of a late 18th to early 19th century wall forming a corridor to the east side of the main reception room that was later taken down. The brick for the wall was frogged, which doesn't usually come in until after 1820, but a few high-status buildings had frogged brick in the late 18th century, and this was an early style of frogging. Some fo the bricks are stamped BW and it may be possible to track down this maker and get a better idea of when they were made. Some of the pottery associated with the layer was also late 18th century. Chimney fragments in the layer above the wall date to the late 19th or early 20th century, giving a rough date of destruction (B15).