156 - Marrington Hall
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2023
Summary
Marrington, the former seat of the Davies family and their heirs the Price-Davies, has a late sixteenth-century core which is represented by the three centre bays of the ground floor and where, externally, the close studded timbering with herringbone bracing above can still be seen. This, though, is now wholly subservient – indeed, almost lost – within a somewhat zany later nineteenth-century two-storey refacing of the south front that is crowned by four gables. Much of this has timber frame patterns painted onto plaster, with bulbous squat quatrefoils, ovals and trefoil-headed arches which bear little or no relation to genuine vernacular. The gables, which punctuate the slate roof, are each above projecting bays; that to the left containing the porch, whilst the bay to its right is canted and may, in fact, be part of a Regency alteration to the earlier house. The old house is only otherwise evident in close studded framing of the seventeenth century which remains visible in one of the north gables. The Victorian works were commissioned by Lewis Richard Price and appear to have been undertaken by the Milford Haven architect Frederick Wehnert (1801–1871), whose bills of 1868–70 also included payments for papier-maché enrichments to the interior. The house today has a series of nineteenth-century panelled rooms, whilst the main staircase is in the seventeenth-century style.
Quite how the house appeared before the late Victorian works is not known, although letters written in 1860, during the tenancy of Mr and Mrs Gordon Forbes, reference the poor condition of the house, with plaster falling off the stone walls, suggesting that the timber-framed core had been extended in other materials. When Fletcher Moss visited and met the then owner – Stafford Price-Davies (1866–1939) – he wrote, in 1903, that:
the present owner tells us that when he rebuilt the house that had been there for three hundred years, many of the timbers were found to be those of a much older house that had been used over again.
Fletcher Moss noted the arms of successive owners over the door, including the De Bowlers or Bowdlers who had long been there, and also observed a hollow oak tree with a seat inside it near to the house, which added to the charm of the place.
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- The Country Houses of Shropshire , pp. 422 - 424Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021