Listed Building record MDO9579 - St Giles House, Wimborne St Giles

17th century or earlier manor house with 18th and 19th century additions and alterations. Has walls of brickwork with ashlar dressings, and roof-coverings of slate and of lead. The building is now mainly two-storeyed with cellars and attics, but the basement storey in the E. block was formerly above ground and its rooms have been made into cellars by the construction of later terraces.

(SU 03211159) St Giles's House (NR) <2> (4) ST. GILES'S HOUSE (03221159) has walls of brickwork with ashlar dressings, and roof-coverings of slate and of lead. The building is now mainly two-storeyed with cellars and attics, but the basement storey in the E. block was formerly above ground and its rooms have been made into cellars by the construction of later terraces. On the death of Sir Anthony Ashley in 1628 the manor of St. Giles passed to his only child Anne, wife of Sir John Cooper of Rockbourne, and on Sir John's death in 1631 to his grandson, Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the statesman and politician who in 1672 was created Earl of Shaftesbury. Sir Anthony greatly enlarged and modernised his maternal grandfather's house. In an autobiographical fragment he records 'On 19 March 1650/1 I laid the first stone of my house at St. Giles' (Christie, First Earl of Shaftesbury, p. lv), and a document of 1654 states that 'Sir A. A Cooper has occasion to carry timber and stone to his building' (Cal. S.P.Dom., 1654, p. 303). bow windows in the S. front, and dormer-windowed attics (Plate 74). The manor house inherited by the 1st earl appears to be represented by thick walls of neatly coursed red brickwork seen in the lower storey of the central range of the present building (basements of Green Room, Small Dining Room, Ante-room), but not enough is exposed, at present, to allow inference of an original plan. Some 30 yds. N.E. of these walls, in a cellar below the Tapestry Room, a moulded stone doorway of 16th-century origin appears to be another relic of the Ashley house, perhaps of the tower-like building shown in the 1659 sketch. Other remains include fragments of oak panelling now in the library (Plate 35); a 15th-century carved alabaster panel (Plate 73), now in the room below the Green Room, with a shield-of-arms, three bulls passant quartering three talbots passant, recorded at the Heralds' Visitation of 1531 as Ashley quartering Talbot (John Ashley married Edith Talbot temp. Richard II); a roundel of stained glass with the same arms above the inscription 'scutum Henrici Ashley'. probably of the 16th century; and three square pillars of rusticated ashlar, perhaps of early 17th-century origin, now seen in the basement below the E. end of the library, but evidently not in situ. The old range, shown on the 1659 sketch extending E.-W. between the 1st earl's new building and the watercourse, probably remained standing until the 18th century, when it was removed to make way for the Great Dining Room (Plate 77) erected by Henry Flitcroft for the 4th earl. Flitcroft also worked on a 'New Hall', identifiable as the present Tapestry Room. and on a 'Musick Room next to the Great Dining Room', evidently the present White Hall (account books 1740-4, St. Giles's House muniments). As the S.W. wing appears on Vivares's engraving it must have been built before 1774, but there is no record of the date of building, and at the time of demolition in 1972 no datable features were seen. The obliquity of the wing suggests that it was built on the foundations of some earlier range; on the sketch of 1659, however, the site is shown vacant. In the period 1813-20 the 6th earl employed Thomas Cundy on extensive alterations, for which accounts exist. Among them were the roofing-over of an inner courtyard to form the Stone Hall and the formation of a Library to from the S.; the library extends into the S.W. part of the 1651 building. In 1853 the 7th earl employed P. C. Hardwick to pull down and rebuild the kitchens on the N. of the W. court, and in 1854 Hardwick built Italianate towers over the entrance vestibule and small dining room he also remodelled and heightened the roofs. <4> The house is the earliest example in Dorset of the style introduced by Inigo Jones. Grade 1. <1> St Giles House. Grade I. <3, 6>

Record last edited

Feb 23 2023 12:14PM