Country house, early C18, incorporating earlier Tudor building, outbuildings and walled garden. Finely coursed ironstone with limestone ashlar dressings and Swithland slate roofs. 2 storeyed with attics. A tablet in the church records that Reverend Henry Palmer, d. 1856, extensively restored the house, and so presumably much of the interior work is his. Two rooms have very richly worked plaster panelled ceilings, probably executed by Italian craftsmen.
- Walled Kitchen Garden
Date unknown but machine made-bricks and major works by Rev. Henry Palmer suggest a date probably in the mid nineteenth century. The walled garden appears on the first edition O/S map c.1885-6.
The whole site of the WKG is approximately 1.5 acres. It is essentially a rectangle with curved corners at NE and the NW and a block of stables filling the SE corner. The 1st edition O/S map shows greenhouses and frames in 2 locations: northeast alongside trees, possibly an orchard; and in the south, between the stables to the east and west of a domestic-looking 2-storey building (see photographs).
The Sale Catalogue 1926 describes the WKG: ‘Excellent WKG with conservatories, peach house, cucumber house and forcing house. Also a range of brick and slated buildings consisting of bothy, potting shed, tool house, fruit chamber and mushroom house and also a brick-built and slated store chamber. Adjoining there was an orchard drying ground.’
Currently as seen from the public footpath the WKG no longer functions as a kitchen garden but is partially utilised for farm storage and machinery.
First Edition O/S Map, 1886, of Withcote Hall and WKG Saddleback coping and slate dripcourse Brick lining of wall and possible gate pier Western wooden gate into the WKG Vehicular entrance adjacent to the stables See our full research report on the Walled Kitchen Garden here:
Withcote Hall - Photos