The Manor House is sited immediately East of Wiston Castle. A view by the Buck brothers c. 1740 (reproduced in Cadw's guide to Wiston Castle) shows the predecessor of the Manor House approached by a gatehouse. The gatehouse and three-storey domestic range beyond it stand more or less on the site of the present Home Farm (NPRN 405268). Beyond (perhaps marked by the smoke from the chimneys hidden by trees) is the present manor house. The old Manor House, the seat of the Wogan family, seems to have been abandoned after acquisition by the Cawdorestate. The shell of the old Manor House seems to have survived until the early C19th but the entry for Wiston in Lewis's Topographical Dictionary (1830s) explains that a farmer lived in part of the house, presumably the present Manor House.

The present Manor House was new-built in the first half of the early eighteenth-century. The house is of central entry type with [] bays with the stars and services sited in a rear lean-to. Some surviving timber detail is broadly contemporary with the house including a splendid 'buffet' cupboard, doors with fielded panels, and the staitr which has an ogee-stopped newel post. The splendid roof, recently revealed, dates the construction of the house to 1732.

The roof is complete and splendid example of vernacular carpentry. The roof-trusses are all of the same type: notch-lapped collar-beam trusses with chamfers. The trusses are boldly numbered I - XII but have not been erected in sequence. One of the trusses over the 'annexe' has the inscription 1732 on the collar which must date the house. The house was therefore newly-built at the time of Buck brothers sketch.



R.F. Suggett/RCAHMW/Nov. 2006