16. The Manor House
It is not known when the first Manor House was built in Harley. It would have been built in Harley rather than Domas even though Domas was at the time the village centre.
The Victoria County History states that ‘the site of the Manor House is not known’. However it goes on to say that ‘the manorial Dovecote, first recorded in the 13thC, stood in a field to the north of the churchyard in the 17thC and was still in use in 1668.
The field to the north of the churchyard is today known as The Pound Field. Earlier it was known as the Conigree and later as First Coney Burrow; that is a rabbit warren.
The website Researching Historic Buildings in the British Iles notes that typically, in villages, the most substantial building was the Manor House. It comprised a Great Hall for court meetings and other village business, private rooms for the Lord and his family, storerooms, kitchen and outside; stables, barns, nearby dovecote, and farm buildings. Often, a church alongside, with the Manor House sometimes moated with a gatehouse.
The phrase ‘nearby dovecote’ surely means that the Dovecote stood fairly close to the Manor House.
Therefore, the Manor House stood on the Pound Field.
To substantiate this, only a Lord of the Manor could own a Dovecote, which in those days could be massive structures. Some were taller than the Manor House itself. There were various shapes, but a common one was round and domed making a huge beehive shape built in stone. They were considered to be a status symbol. This in itself would indicate that the Dovecote would have to have been a prominent feature in the grounds of the Manor House, or nearby, and probably would have been visible from it.
Early Manor Houses were built within villages in close proximity to the church in order to recognize the close relationship of the two. The Victoria County History refers to this closeness but this reference is not to physical closeness.
Much later Manor Houses were sited on the village edge and by the 18thC were sited in country locations outside of villages.
Lastly it is rather strange that during the rebuilding of Harley in the period 1600 to 1650 the Pound Field was never built on. Remember that the Dovecote was still there as a reminder perhaps of past glories. It could also be that after having had a Lord living in the village for nearly 250 years the Lord was considered a stable and permanent presence; a kind of royal presence.
Surprisingly, the Dovecote remained standing and in use from the death of the Lord, and the abandonment of the Manor House in 1349 to 1688 – a period of 339 years.
Incidentally Dovecotes were a source of food and also provided eggs and manure and feathers for pillows. The medieval name was Culverhouse.
NOTE – The VCH states that the manorial dovecote stood in a field north of the church. This is now called the Pound Field.
As this was prior to the building of Church Cottage in the 18th C the dovecote could have stood on the site of Church Cottage – or on the Pound Field.
The 1735 map shows a circle located into what is now the driveway of Church Cottage adjacent to the road. There are no other circular formations in the vicinity.
If this circle represents the ruin of the dovecote it would have been standing between the church and the manor house. A likely location.
It is very probable that the dovecote was stone built
At the rear of the present day Church Cottage there is a water garden which uses a prolific amount of stone slabs. There are so many that it seems very unlikely that these were imported to build a decorative water garden. The presumed site of the dovecote is only a short distance away .
The location of the Manor House
The first Ordnance Survey sheet of 1882 shows a large, rectangular building at the southern end of the Pound Field fronting the village road, and opposite the Kenley road.
It measures 25 m x 9 m. It is almost as large as the church. An old map of 1735 shows a similar building in the same position.
On current visual inspection of the field near the road, there is a distinctive raised ground shape running parallel to the village road about 8m from it, and about 0.45m in height, in the same location as indicated on the two maps.
This is almost certainly the remains of the Manor House. The buildings shown on the two maps will both be ruins.
The 1902 OS sheet, and the following sheets are blank in this area.
The key factor here is whether the ruins of the Manor House could have persisted until c1700.
It is known that the last Lord of the Manor died in 1349, and that after that date, the Manor House was not occupied, and that building materials were plundered. The kitchen roof tiles for example were taken to Harnage. This process probably continued until very little was left of the structure except the base foundations or lower walls. The time lapse between 1349 and 1700 or thereabouts is 350 years, so without doubt the ruins could have persisted over this period.
Manor Houses were stone built structures and were designed to last for centuries.
