| The Manor House, alias West End, and also Place, Farm, adjoins the grounds of Froyle Place, and was, until 2011, part of the Lord Mayor Treloar School. The house, faced in early Georgian red brick, is a high, steeply roofed building, the evolution of which is difficult to deduce; several of the rooms are panelled in bolection wainscot which, with the staircase, can scarcely be later than 1730. William Draper succeeded Gauden Draper as squire at Froyle Place in 1710: a big improvement of the home farmhouse may have been undertaken at that date, possibly to convert it into a dower house. An unusual feature of the staircase is the decoration of the under surface of the upper flight with crudely painted landscapes, recalling distantly the “King of Grisaille” scenes introduced by Thornhill in some of the lower surfaces of his painted hall and staircase at Stoke Edith, circa 1725. This picture is from a postcard dated 1905. |