Summary
Of Caynton Manor, only the gatehouse survives to trumpet the former high status of this site which, since at least the eighteenth century has been relegated to the status of a farmstead. The present manor house is ostensibly of the first half of the eighteenth century, with five bays and three storeys divided by plat bands. The two bays at the left side of the north front are clearly an addition, whilst the remaining three bays have evidently been heightened and show evidence of two small, segmentally-arched windows with fanned headers, which have been in-filled. The building would perhaps benefit from further investigation, as would the garden in which the 1880 Ordnance Survey shows a terrace south-west of the house, with what appears to be a semicircular bastion and small building – perhaps a gazebo like that which survives at Shifnal Manor (q.v.). Sadly by the time of the 1900 Ordnance Survey, the building had gone and the elliptical projection has now been clipped off the garden boundary.
The two-storey gatehouse, though, which was incorporated in the farm buildings when the site became purely agricultural is a remarkable survival of circa 1635, built of brick with red sandstone dressings and a central ground floor arched opening. This still retains a broad sandstone frieze at first-floor level along with a three-light mullioned window on the ground floor. On the first floor, a partially blocked eight-light mullioned and transomed window would have provided light to a south-facing room which still retains a chimneypiece with deep frieze above a Tudor-arch. Running around the room is a broad plasterwork frieze. This is composed, or strapwork ornamented, with birds holding swags, a motif which can be found in similar friezes at Benthall (q.v.) and at Abcott (q.v.). The room’s overmantel is decorated with the Yonge family’s coat of arms and carries the inscription ‘WY 1635’, flanked by two term figures.
Caynton was the property of the Caynton (or de Caynton) family until the late fourteenth century, when their heiress, Beatrice, married Thomas Yonge or le Yonge. The Yonges rose in stature in Shropshire, with Thomas’s great grandson, Sir William Yonge I (d. 1495), serving as MP for Salop in 1477–8, and as High Sheriff in 1492.
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- Information
- The Country Houses of Shropshire , pp. 156 - 158Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021