An ideal manor house

Mapperton House, Dorset The home of the Viscount and Viscountess Hinchingbrooke. Fresh research reveals more about the history of one of our most celebrated manor houses and its magnificent gardens, finds Timothy Conno

- Timothy Connor

Fig 1: The main front and gates, with eagle-topped piers, of the manor house

MAPPERTON HOUSE answers the popular ideal of a time-worn English manor house, with its rambling outline and mellow stonework. The property and associated estate have been owned since the Middle Ages by minor gentry families and, until 1919, had never been sold, but descended by marriage or inheritance. The story of the present building, almost certainly erected near or on the site of a yet more ancient house, begins with one Robert Morgan (d. 1567). His family had been in possession of the manor since the 15th century, but his father had resided in Worcestershire. Morgan’s initiative to rebuild perhaps followed his marriage to Mary Wogan, who came from just over the Somerset border.

It must have been in the 1540s that Morgan built both a hall—elements of which are now subsumed within the remodelled central block of the house—and the north wing to its left. A lost inscription that proudly commemorated the work was visible in the hall in the 1760s. The north wing is closely dateable, sharing with a well-known group of local houses characteristic angle pilasters terminating in spiral finials. Parallels are to be found at Melbury, built by 1542 for Sir Giles Strangways, Clifton Maybank of 1545–50 (fragments survive on the north front at Montacute) and the north wing of Athelhampton. At Mapperton, the corner pilasters are topped with heraldic beasts carrying shields of arms, a detail also formerly found at Milton Abbey. These beasts are certainly original, because the griffin holding the family shield can be seen in an etching of 1816, before the house underwent antiquarian restoration.