Wigborough Manor House is a

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...

South Petherton South Petherton is a village and civil parish in the South Somerset district of Somerset, England, located east of Ilminster and north of Crewkerne. The parish had a population of 3,367 in 2011 and includes the smaller village of Over Stra ...

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

, England. It was partly built in 1585, although it was never completed to the original designs and was subsequently modified. It has been designated as a Grade I listed building. The estate was shared by members of the Brome Family from 1581 to 1615, when it passed to the family of Hele of Flete, who held it for most of the 17th century. The house is built of local

hamstone Hamstone is the name given to a honey-coloured building stone from Ham Hill, Somerset, England. It is a well-cemented medium to coarse grained limestone characterised by marked bedding planes of clay inclusions and less well-cemented material ...

with

Welsh slate The existence of a slate industry in Wales is attested since the Roman period, when slate was used to roof the fort at Segontium, now Caernarfon. The slate industry grew slowly until the early 18th century, then expanded rapidly until the l ...

roofs. The core the house consists of a

screens passage A great hall is the main room of a royal palace, castle or a large manor house or hall house in the Middle Ages, and continued to be built in the country houses of the 16th and early 17th centuries, although by then the family used the great c ...

with a gallery above it. When the house was built, there was a projecting

garderobe Garderobe is a historic term for a room in a medieval castle. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' gives as its first meaning a store-room for valuables, but also acknowledges "by extension, a private room, a bed-chamber; also a privy". The word der ...

turret; however, this has since been removed. Dendochronology of the wood forming the tie-beam and

collar-beam A collar beam or collar is a horizontal member between two rafters and is very common in domestic roof construction. Often a collar is structural but they may be used simply to frame a ceiling. A collar beam is often called a collar tie but thi ...

trusses A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assembla ...

of the roof has shown that a construction date of 1585 is more likely than the previous estimates, which suggested an earlier date. A two-storey house in the grounds was originally a brewhouse or dairy. It was built in the 19th century. There is also a former coach house from the 18th century. The cider house includes cellars and a loft. There are also various barns and stables, part of which dates from 1765. The boundary wall has sections which date from the 16th century; however, much of it was rebuilt in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Vaux Park Polo Club has its headquarters at Wigborough Manor.

References

{{reflist Houses completed in 1585 Grade I listed buildings in South Somerset Polo in the United Kingdom

See also

References