To the manor reborn

A charming Tudor house in Dorset comes to the market for the first time in almost three centuries

- Penny Churchill

WRITING in COUNTRY LIFE of The Manor House, Sandford Orcas, near Sherborne, Dorset (March 3 and 10, 1966), a house he describes as ‘one of the most charming manor houses in the West of England’, the magazine’s then Architectural Editor, Arthur Oswald, maintains that ‘often the most enchanting of Tudor houses prove to have been those that were deserted by their owners in the 18th century and turned into farmhouses’. He explains that ‘although farmers might not be the best of custodians, they were unlikely to make more than minor alterations themselves, and most landlords would have been content with the minimum of maintenance. So the house would remain unchanged’.

Thus it was that, in 1872, after 124 years of farmer occupation, Hubert Hutchings, whose family had owned the estate since the early 1700s, decided to live at the manor himself. Working closely with his architect, Harry Hall, who, according to Oswald, ‘had a light touch and no aggressive urge to leave the marks of his own personality behind’, Hutchings carried out a ‘quite unusually sympathetic’ renovation of the manor house, now listed Grade I. Hutchings died in 1898 and, following the death of his widow in 1914, Sandford Orcas passed under the terms of his will to his cousin, Sir Hubert Medlycott, the 6th baronet, of Ven House at nearby Milborne Port. Sir Hubert was succeeded at The Manor House by his son, also Hubert, and his grandson, Christopher, who let the house until 1978, when it passed to the late Sir Mervyn Medlycott, the 9th baronet. He died in 2021, after undertaking another extensive refurbishment, during which the roof was renewed, and the entire house re-plumbed and re-wired.