Description

TL 22 SE ASTON ASTON BURY LANE
(west side)

3/20 Aston Bury Manor
(formerly listed as
20.10.52 Aston Bury)

GV I

Manor house. Mid Cl7 (heraldic door spandrels of 1540-45 reused
in doorway to E stair) for Cason family. Restorations: 1883
for Captain W E F O'Brien; 1908-9 for Vernon Malcolmson by Forsyth
and Maule. Adapted for educational use by Hertfordshire County
Council c1972. Ground floor walls of flint, banded with brick
and with brick dressings; first floor of timber framing infilled
and faced with brick. Steep old red tiled roofs. A long rectangular
block of 2 storeys, cellars and attics, facing N with 2 large
gabled stair wings at rear. The house is remarkable for the
symmetry of all the elevations and the original upper floor plans.
Ground floor had a passage separating the hall on LH leading
to main stair and parlour, from service rooms and elaborate second
staircase. The twin staircases are a remarkable feature, each
approached separately and serving a pair of principal 1st floor
rooms with pairs of lesser rooms between, the rear one lit by
a balustraded grille from the staircase. This design is to eliminate
the need to approach one room through another. The 2nd floor
was a long gallery with plastered waggon ceiling, 2 fireplaces,
and gable end windows as well as 4 dormers, now partitioned into
bedrooms. 7 windows long symmetrical N front with 4 shaped gables
alternating with hipped dormers behind linking parapets. 4-light
ovolo-moulded mullioned and transomed windows in moulded brick
surrounds, with leaded glazing. Central gabled porch c1908 protects
square-headed moulded entrance doorway with moulded oak doorframe.
Moulded string at 1st floor and eaves level. Mullioned windows
to cellar to right of porch. Buttresses on end walls at corners.
End gables have sinuous double-curved brick coping and paired
ornamental chimney stalks each side of centre with spurred caps.
2 groups of 3 similar shafts rise from rear wallhead. Lofty
ground floor rooms and lower floor level at W end former kitchen,
with very wide lintoled gable fireplace and blocked 4-light heavy
oak ovolo-moulded window in rear wall. E open-well staircase
with closed string, bi-symmetrical turned balusters, and heavy
square newels, rises to attic level and has tall finials on corner
newels composed of an obelisk on balls raised on an arched pierced
base. Acorn finials and arabesque decorated wooden band fixed
to string and floor-edge at landings. W staircase of similar
design but with more traditional pierced Jacobean finials. High
walls extend to rear to enclose a small terraced garden with
a 4-centred arched gateway in each side. (Country Life
26.3.1910, 450-8: RCHM (1911) 42-3: VCH (1912) 54-5: Pevsner
(1977) 79: RCHM Typescript).

Listing NGR: TL2760621702

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Aston Bury at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q4810948

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Farrow & Ball How to Decorate: Transform your home with paint & paper
• 
  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  London 3: North West: North West v. 3 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  England's Post-War Listed Buildings
• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2