Doughton Manor - Making it home

Purchasing a property to carry out a restoration project is an intimidating task for anyone, let alone a Grade I listed manor house. Fortunately our client knew the building well and had fallen in love with it.

When we first met, the primary aims were make the house warm, make it a home and not to become bankrupt in the process. Having visited the house for the first time, we were quickly aligned for a vision for the house.

Our aim to follow in the footsteps of Norman Jewson, who carried out the last major phase of restoration in the 1930s. He left the exterior virtually unchanged but altered the interior quite significantly, although the changes were sensitively made and sufficient to enable the building to continue to be used as a single dwelling'.

At the time of writing, listed building consent has been granted and the scaffold is being erected, and we are on track on all three.

Making the house warm

In order to make the house warm we have followed the whole building approach to retrofit, which started with a condition survey. The condition survey revealed that there were five locations were water was entering the building and saturating the walls. Addressing building fabric condition is the primary means of energy saving and include:

• Re-roofing the house in Cotswold Stone Slates.

• Addressing building fabric repairs to plaster and the structure where the roof has failed.

• Removing cement-based render and repairing and consolidating the 17th century rough cast render to help draw moisture out of the wall.

• Applying a lime wash finish.

9 months of research on u-values and repairs has led to our secondry approach to heat loss through addressing airtightness through plastering, a passive ventilation system and installing secondary double glazing.

Insulation will be provided to elements of the building fabric where works are being undertaken, for example in the floorvoids and where insulation has not been installed before - using an insulating lime render for the torching below the roofing tiles.

Finally for the technology, a new high temperature air source heat pump is proposed to feed conventional radiators throughout the house. As the walls will take many years to dry out after the works, we have designed in dehumidifiers within the building fabric which can be removed when the the walls are eventually dry.

Making it a home

The principle of the scheme has remained the same throughout the process, however, as with any scheme some concessions were made along the way through a collaborative relationship and open dialogue with Hisotric England and Cotswold District Council.

The internal alterations include:

• Creating a boot-room entrance with utility and laundry.

• Providing ensuite bathroom accommodation to each of the bedrooms, a master bedroom suite and guest suite.

• Addressing the flow of the house through reinstating a historic newel staircase.

• Restoration of the parlour.

• Unpicking modern alterations to create a family snug area.

• Converting the coach house to an annex for guests and visitors.

Alterations to the landscape include:

• Restoring historic pathways.

• Restoring the front approach  and boundary walls.

• A new glass house.

• A new external lighting scheme.

• Reinstatement of boundary treatments and gates.

 Ecology

• Bats roost in the roof are maintained and a new bat roost created in the garage and provision made for swallow nest cups.

Not becoming bankrupt in the process.

A cost plan has been provided by the Vaughan Consultancy, at the end of the feasibility study to make sure that the scope of works was within the clients budget. The project has been procured on a two stage tender bases and Castellum were appointed earlier this year as main contractor. The subcontract packages are being procured on an open book basis as the works commence on site.

Project team

• Client - Private.

• Contractor - Castellum

• Architect - James Mackintosh Architects Ltd.

• Quantity surveyor – Vaughan Consultancy.

• Structural Engineer – Frank W Haywood and Associates.

• M&E Ingleton Wood.

• Drainage. Infrastruct CS

• Ecology - Wildwood Ecology.

• Interior design - Lauren Gilberthorpe Interiors.

And now for a little bit of history….

The development of Doughton Manor is complex and the short summary is provided below to provide architectural context to the development of the house. A more detailed history of the house can be found in our heritage statement.

Phase I - Early history. The Seeds

The first records of the present Manor relate to John Seed the elder, a Tetbury Burgher who leased an estate at Doughton around 1567 on a 21-year lease granted by a letters patent (similar to a royal decree) from Queen Elizabeth I. John Seed is referred to as a Yeoman in his will of 1579, in which he bequeaths his land to his wife Eleanor.  It is thought that John the younger was aged 5 when his father died. John Seed the younger was ostensibly bankrupt in 1597 and had sold the estate by 1601.

Whilst the early history of the house is unclear it appears possible that the house was in existence in the early C16 and went through a significant phase of development at the end of the C16.

A source of evidence to support a late C16 phase of development are mason’s marks found at the house, a ‘H’ and a ‘W’, have been attributed to a John Horwood and a William Whitinge of Tetbury. Horwood died in 1624 and Whitinge in 1636. William Veisey, owner of the local quarry was executor and witness for both wills and stone from his quarry was almost certainly used on the window surrounds and architectural embellishments. Neither wills give an indication of their respective ages but it is likely that the earliest they could have worked on the house is c.1580.

Phase II - The Talboys

Having carried out substantial alterations, the Talboys made Doughton their family home in 1641 recorded by the initials RT and the year on the gate piers.

Richard Talboys originated from Yorkshire, brought to Tetbury by the wool trade. Attention has focused on his marriages and the wealth he accumulated from dowries, his fourth marriage to Elizabeth Abarrow in 1632, an heiress from Hampshire providing him with the funds for a big building project.

Works thought to date from this phase are the fireplace in the Hall with new chimney stacks and the two-storied canted bay windows on the south and southeast elevation serving the Parlour and Great Chamber above. It is also believed that the Talboys rebuilt part of the east wing to enclose the huge chimneypiece carried up to the Great Chamber above and the stairs positioned in the northwest corner of the building.

According to a local historian, the Talboys may have used part of their grand house to store wool, with storerooms for woolsacks found in the attic space but they may also have added the cellar under the east wing which has a staircase (now blocked) that corresponds with part of the existing

structure. Nicholas Kingsley in his reassessment of Doughton in the second edition of ‘Country Houses of Gloucestershire Vol.1 1500 – 1660’ (2000) suggests that the whole of the internal plan may have been altered in the 1630s to an approximation of its existing form.

The manor of Doughton continued to be passed through the Talboys line until 1819 when Thomas Talboys sold Doughton Manor to John Paul Paul, owner of the neighbouring Highgrove estate for £25,000. For the next hundred years or so from 1819 the house and farm were tenanted.

Phase III - William Hamilton Yatman

Walter Paul sold Doughton in 1860 to Col. F. J. Stacey Clitheroe, from whom William Hamilton Yatman, a barrister bought it in 1864.

The Sale Catalogue for the 1860 sale describes the Manor House as ‘converted into a Farm House, in the occupation of Edward Knight’. Under Yatman’s ownership the roof was renewed in 1887 and a datestone and initials added to the North front. Yatman was immensely proud of Doughton’s history and the house that he had rescued from disrepair often speaking of the house to antiquarian societies in Tetbury.

A serious fire occurred at Highgrove in 1893 which destroyed the interior of the house and part of the exterior as well. It left Yatman dispirited and disinclined to rebuild and he decided to sell both properties in 1894 to Arthur C. Mitchell. who was succeeded by his widow and son Col. Frank. A. Mitchell (d. 1955).

Phase IV - Frank Mitchell

In 1930 Frank Mitchell decided to make Doughton his home and employed Norman Jewson, a prominent Cotswold architect to repair the house.

Prior to Jewson’s work on the house the plan form was recorded in Thomas Garner and Arthur Stratton’s book, The Domestic Architecture of England During the Tudor Period, Vol.1 (1911).

 Jewson’s work at Doughton was careful, judicious, and conservative. As an architect he left behind few noteworthy buildings but what he was known for was his craftsmanship. He carried out a comprehensive, though sensitive restoration at Doughton that included the addition of two new fireplaces in the manner of an existing fire surround in the first floor corridor which originally served the room over the hall (solar). There is evidence that the C16 - C17 panelling and friezes in the Parlour, Great Chamber and other rooms was rearranged to accommodate some of the changes implemented. Frank Mitchell added his initials F.A.M. to the door arch on the inside of the front porch and R.T. to the other spandrel.

In the early 1960s the Mitchell family sold the manor-house with 120 acres to Major R. W. Ingall who farmed the estate, together with a larger acreage held on lease. Dick Carter and his wife bought the house in the 1980s and recently sold it to the current owners. Remarkably the house is little changed from Jewson’s restoration. The Carters reinstated the chimneys to their original height and design.

james mackintosh architects limited

studio@jmackintosh.com

First Floor, 21 The High Street,

Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire
OX7 5AD

01608 692 310 / 07880 727 150