MSO10604 - Knowle House, Knowle Manor, Timberscombe (Building)

Country house, now residential centre. Circa 1878 on earlier site by J D Sedding for Mr Hole. Squared red sandstone, Ham stone dressings, steeply pitched slate roof, decorative ridge tiles, obelisk finials to gabled end bays and central porch, large roughcast stacks to rear. Shallow E-plan. Elizabethan style. Two storeys with attic, 1:3:1:3:1 bays, 3-storey central porch, gable swept up to segmental pediment flanked by obelisks, patterned slate-hung returns to upper storey, 3-light window, pedimented top to 3-light mullioned and transomed first floor window flanked by engaged obelisks, entrance segmental pediment carried on fluted Ionic columns, leaded fanlight, C20 many paned door, flanked by three 3-light mullioned and transomed windows, single light in central bay left, moulded string course on brackets, ground floor with empty semi-circular headed niches in central bays, moulded string course below carried on brackets, gabled end bays with 2-storey canted bays of 4-light mullioned and transomed windows with pediments similar to porch. Most of first floor windows have original circular leading. Panels carved with heraldic achievements below segmental pediments gable ends inscribed Anno D. and 18-- (eroded). C20 single storey addition right not included, on site of original conservatory. Sedding was the architect to the Diocese of Bath and Wells. (Illustrated in The Builder). [1] English Heritage Listed Building Number: 265374. First Listed on 05/06/1985. [2] E-plan. Stone, Ashlar walls. Hipped roof [3] The building was visited in June 2012 as part of the rapid condition survey of Exmoor's Listed Buildings 2012-13. It received a BAR score of 6. [4] Knowle House is depicted and labelled on 2018 MasterMap data. [5] Thomas Charles Lethbridge, an English archaeologist, parapsychologist and explorer, was born in 1901 and lived with his family at Knowle House, at which time the household had six servants and a housemaid. Tom's father, Ambrose Lethbridge was known as a fine watercolour artist. The family moved to Dorchester by 1907. [6] The house was assessed as part of the rapid condition survey of Exmoor’s Listed Buildings 2018-19, receiving a BAR score of 6. [7]